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THE WAY OF 
THE WALKING WOUNDED 


B. F. BORCHARDT 



/ 

The Way of 
The Walking Wounded 

BY 

B. F. BORCHARDT 

Haud ignara mali , miseris succurere disco. 

—Vergil 


DORRANCC 6 COMPANY 

PHILADELPHIA 


Copyright 1924 
Dorrance & Company (nc 



Manufactured in the United States of America 


M 25 ’24 

©Cl A 7 03750 



TO MY FRIEND 

E. J. PFLEIDER 








THE WAY OF 
THE WALKING WOUNDED 








The Way of 
The Walking Wounded 

i 

The old bark Rachel was straining and pitch¬ 
ing before a fresh breeze. The Sand Key light, the 
southernmost outpost of Florida and of the 
United States, had gleamed for the merest instant 
over the white crests of the sweeping phalanxes. 
It had not, however, escaped the careful eye of the 
mate, who now came forward to take a bearing as 
soon as it should appear again. 

Against the forward gunwale, silhouetted in 
the greenish shimmer of a running light that 
probed the darkness like the uncanny spotlight 
of another world searching for its own, leaned 
the figure of a second man whose eyes were 
also on the alert to catch that uncertain glimmer. 
For a brief second it gleamed as the boat rode 
high. The mate made his calculations and started 
aft. 

“Well, lad,” the mate addressed the figure, as 
he, too, came into the baneful reflection of the 
starboard lantern, “yonder’s Yankeeland.’’ 

Jules Cardot turned and shot a grateful look 
at him. After a self-imposed exile of three years 
in South America, his heart was so full of the 
mingled sorrow of the prodigal and genuine 
patriotic joy, that together these emotions 
brought him to the brink of tears and he could 
not trust himself to answer. 

7 


8 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


The light was becoming larger and brighter, 
clear and fixed; occasional higher flashes streaked 
the black rollers in miniature far below it. By 
nature a star-gazer, Cardot welcomed it as an 
honored guest among his friends in the nocturnal 
firmament, for the tropic stars had become in¬ 
tensely personal to him on the long voyage home. 
Vega was a virgin robed in purest white; Arc- 
turus, a satrap gleaming with jewels of many 
facets. There was ruddy Altair, with the mystic 
arrow in perpetual flight near by, and in the west, 
writ large upon the face of the sky, the eternal 
question mark of Scorpio, with its premier star, 
the blazing Antares, glaring at the approach of 
its rival, Mars. 

These and many others with whom he had 
become acquainted, held nightly conferences over 
him and his destinies; to them he bared his past 
and they gleamed or withheld their approval. 
Now they were wheeling and twinkling jocundly 
above him, for there was peace in his heart. 
They seemed to bear a message; it was as though 
they had put their heads together and, nodding 
with extravagant, silent mirth, signalled: “The 
young man doth take himself too seriously. For¬ 
get the past—that dead tyrant that rules the 
world from the debris of time—and address thy¬ 
self joyously to the future.” 

He smiled at this conceit and felt the invigorat¬ 
ing glow of optimism. The future was as blank 
as a new tablet of writing paper. He solemnly 
promised both himself and his heavenly coun¬ 
cillors that he would not re-write the errors of 
the past, nor smudge the book with attempted 
erasures. After three years of knocking around 
on his own, he felt himself decidedly more of a 
man than the bitter undergraduate who had made 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


9 


a mess of a college year and shipped before the 
mast rather than face the music at home. 

As the wand-like bowsprit told off the low- 
hung stars on the vast blackboard ahead of them, 
an inky curtain slowly raised itself in the south, 
one end curved ominously, like the claw of a 
giant bird of prey. There was a low rumble of 
thunder and a few minutes later a distinct, angry 
growl. Sheet lightning scampered across the 
blackness from one end to the other. The wind 
lulled and the rigging slackened; the freshness 
of the air was succeeded by a heavy, still damp¬ 
ness, through which the lanterns aft bleared 
greasily here and there as the crew moved about 
in confused haste making things secure about the 
decks. 

Cardot at the beginning of these preparations 
had joined the mate amidships and waited in 
respectful silence until the operation of lashing 
in a dory was completed. 

“Can’t I help, Mr. Sessions?” he asked. His 
status was that of passenger, but he had seen 
enough of sea-life to know that the idle are 
despised when serious work is ahead. 

“You never can tell about these squalls at this 
time o’ year,” said the mate when the men had 
gone pattering forward to their next job. “It 
looks to me like we’re in for a blow. I’ve smelled 
it for days, and the glass hasn’t been any too 
steady. You stand by,” he finished appreciatively, 
“for we may need every willing hand in a few 
minutes!” 

The boy turned his face to the approaching 
tumult of elements. The parry and thrust of 
sharp lightning was now supported by the heavy 
artillery of the heavens, and a tremor of ex¬ 
hilaration passed down his spine. The wind 



10 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


began to flow like a swift, invisible river out 
of the darkness ahead of him; the rigging taut¬ 
ened and strained, vibrating and humming. A 
loose tackle banged against the mainmast, was 
silent and banged again. 

In a rapture of enthusiasm Cardot went below 
and reappeared shortly in sou’wester, slicker and 
boots. The wind in that time had gone to a gale. 
He took his post again and watched with a sort 
of reverent and detached awe as a ghostlike wall 
of angry foam and rain moved down upon the 
vessel. 

The initial slap of the storm struck her with 
surprising suddenness. She seemed to creak and 
groan aloud from every timber, burying her 
nose deeply under tons of sea water. There was 
a lull and the old bark righted herself wearily. 
The rain swept the decks in obliterating torrents, 
beating down the seas that leaped to meet it. 
Cardot, enclosed in its wet folds, staggered in¬ 
board, overpowered. There came more wind, 
screaming gusts that shot rain and foam in hor¬ 
izontal lines across the deck. The heavy metal 
frame of a skylight, torn loose, flew seaward like 
a gull. 

Cardot made his way laboriously to the cabin, 
but found scant comfort there. He wanted to 
help. Strangely enough it seemed, too, that far 
back in his boyish day-dreams he had passed 
through just such a storm; only then he was at 
the helm, holding the vessel in the teeth of the 
gale, his confident bearing giving heart to the 
cowed crew, while the one fair lady passenger 
gazed at him so adoringly that he must needs 
relax his stern seriousness to smile on her. 

He pushed through the door again and in the 
drenched companionway met Mr. Sessions. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


11 


“Come with me, lad,” said the mate shortly. 
Cardot followed him up the stairs and into the 
black, howling confusion. 

“Here’s the jackstay,” bawled the mate, pulling 
toward him a taut, whistling line that led forward 
into the blackness. The two men hung on the 
line, waiting for a lull before they could venture 
along it. 

“Hurricane!” yelled Mr. Sessions in Cardot’s 
ear. “Dangerous semicircle . . . have to 

carry sail long as possible ’fore we heave to.” 

There came a slackening of the wind and they 
were able to reach the mainmast. Cardot climbed 
behind the mate up the ratlines to the foretop, 
holding grimly on while the gusts tried with 
fiendish ingenuity to tear them loose. The task 
of shortening sail seemed hopeless, but Cardot was 
working desperately when a loose end of canvas 
struck him a stinging blow across the face. The 
next instant he was in the water clinging to the 
broken topmast, part and parcel of the storm 
itself. 


II 


The sun rose and set and rose again before 
Cardot opened his eyes on a broad and glistening 
beach. He lay propped against a sand dune, and 
the realization that he was still alive was ex¬ 
tremely painful in his nauseating state of semi¬ 
consciousness. His head was cracking and before 
his feverish eyes horrible figures alternated with 
a medley of human faces. It seemed to him that 
he had been watching them for an eternity and 
they bored him intensely. They were faces with 
the cruel yet guileless leer of the savage, whose 
features even as he watched were transformed 
by degrees into those of grotesque monsters and 
then of hideous hags, whose long, lifeless hair, 
gray as the stormy ocean, floated and undulated 
in his sick imagination. 

After what seemed aeons of helpless gazing, 
one of the faces began to predominate, that of 
an old man with long, grisly beard, bushy, crag¬ 
like brows, and pitted, blue-seamed nose. The 
hair that covered the face seemed to flow from 
the nostrils in two divergent streams. A bat¬ 
tered and faded military forage cap, vintage of 
’64, was half buried, like a long-deserted bird’s 
nest, in the umbrageous shock of the tousled 
head. The expression on the face fluctuated 
between benignity and horrible bestiality. 

Cardot presently became aware that cool 
liquid was being forced down his parched throat 
and that the owner of the face was leaning over 
him, administering a drink of water. Every 
molecule of his body was crying for the 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


13 


precious drops; and the face, with its senile blue 
eyes, became fixed in its kindness. 

When the old man saw that his efforts had 
produced results, he wiped the perspiration 
from his forehead and stood alternately grin¬ 
ning and staring at the castaway. 

“Well, how are you now?” he asked. 

“Better,” answered Cardot wanly. Finding 
himself safe he slipped comfortably into a 
comatose sleep. Since it is the blessed quality 
of abject misery that it cannot be long remem¬ 
bered, his hours of desperate struggle while 
clinging to his spar, seemed far behind him. 

He awoke again to find his friend still stand¬ 
ing over him, gazing down with the profound 
curiosity of a child. 

“I don’t suppose you can walk?” he asked 
finally. Cardot made a futile effort to get on 
his feet and fell back exhausted. 

“Don’t try, sonny. Wait till John comes up. 
We can carry you. That’s our business, you 
know—carryin’ in the flotsam of the sea.” 

Bared by the low tide the beach was a glar¬ 
ing expanse fully five hundred feet wide, and 
looking across the sands, dizzy and faint¬ 
headed, Cardot made out another figure strug¬ 
gling, like an ant with a beetle, under an ap¬ 
parently impossible piece of wreckage. His 
trousers were rolled above his knees, disclosing 
legs magnificently muscled. With a final effort 
he discharged his load beyond the high-water 
mark on the shore and approached. The ship¬ 
wrecked man began to wonder if nightmare 
were not still upon him when he found that this 
newcomer was the exact counterpart of the 
other, even to the venerable army cap. 

They picked Cardot up and carried him with 


14 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


ease down the beach, then up a sand dune. 
They crossed the slope of this, with its scant 
sea-vegetation, and passing through a breach in 
a veritable chevaux-de-frise of Spanish bayo¬ 
nets, came into a clearing littered with the 
vomit of the sea. There were teredo-eaten 
timbers, hatch-covers with tops of torn tar¬ 
paulin; there were rotting life-preservers, 
cocoanut shells, an empty wine bottle. A mute, 
inglorious figurehead that once, resplendent 
with gilt, had swept haughtily over the seas at 
the prow of a noble schooner, now turned her 
sightless eyes despairingly to the heavens, sans 
gilt, sans half a nose, sans everything. 

Out of this oceanic hotchpotch a crazy struc¬ 
ture reared itself, like a hillock of the same 
material. Here, slowing up a little, they passed 
through a door marked in porcelain, Captain’s 
Cabin, the entrance to a sanctum before which 
many a timid sailor had once quailed before wak¬ 
ing the “old man.” 

“Welcome to our home,” said one of the 
brothers. 

For a week Cardot was a very sick man, but 
as the fever brought on by his exposure abated, 
he began to take interest in his new surroundings. 
The old men, whose names he learned were Eben 
and John, were as happy over the recovery of 
their guest as parents might have been over a 
child that had passed a crisis. They had relieved 
each other in ministering to his wants, and Eben 
had transferred his shipmaking from the work¬ 
shop, which adjoined the shack, to this general 
living and sleeping room. The interior of the 
place savored as much of the sea as the outside; 
there was above everything an inextinguishable 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


15 


salt-water-soaked smell, but the improvised bunks, 
rough tables and chairs had been scrubbed white. 

Awakening one day from a refreshing sleep, 
the young man found Eben deeply engrossed in 
fashioning a diminutive sloop. Cardot lay quietly 
marvelling at the nicety with which he shaped 
its fragile parts. He was stepping a wand-like 
mast but looked up from his work for a moment 
to call out cheerily: 

“Well, how’s the sailorman today?” 

“Entirely well. Fine and dandy! I’ll have to 
be moving on now. I can’t impose too long on 
good nature.” 

“Take your time, sonny. You’re not imposing 
on anybody here—not a soul. This is an event in 
the life of two such hermits as John and myself. 
You know life moves pretty much in a groove 
for two old cranks like us.” 

He had put down his mast and, looking indul¬ 
gently toward his patient, asked: 

“How’d you like a little broth, some bluefish 
chowder?” 

“Fine! I feel starved today.” 

“You know,” continued Eben, as he bestirred 
himself to light a small kerosene stove in the 
room, “I pitched my line out from the beach yes¬ 
terday sundown and pulled in five of these beau¬ 
ties, one after the other, fast as I could throw 
out. Seems a shame to make a chowder of ’em, 
but I laid a couple out to broil. Fish is the 
leadin’ article of our diet, and after that comes 
grits and—” 

Cardot interrupted his garrulousness. “Tell 
me some of the news. Is the United States in 
the War yet, or are they still writing notes?” 

“Well, sonny, we don’t keep in touch with the 
world much, but when the last newspaper drifted 


16 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


in it begun to look like it was just a question of 
days.” He looked up from his cooking, and it 
may have been a reflection of the flame, but 
Cardot thought he saw the old man’s eye flash. 
“Sonny, I would trade anything I have in this 
world, or the next either for that matter, for 
your youth and the privilege of getting in that 
war.” 

His animation amazed the younger man, who 
began to wonder if he were really as old as he 
appeared. 

“I’ve seen my threescore and ten, but I’d help 
—if they gave me the chance.” 

Cardot was curious. He associated the forage 
caps with this sudden martial fervor. There was 
something in the past of the pair that had brought 
them to this isolated place; plainly the mill-race 
of life had lodged them in its backwaters. 

“I was coming back to enlist,” explained Car- 
dot. “If you could furnish me with a pencil and 
paper, I might write home for a few necessities 
and at the same time tell them of my mishaps and 
the good Samaritans that have taken such care 
of me.” 

“I’ll do that, but first get on the outside of 
this chowder. You’ll feel stronger.” 

“On the table, if you please,” said Cardot, as 
Eben brought the steaming bowl to the bunk- 
side. “The very smell of that puts new life into 
a fellow.” 

He rose unsteadily and sat down before it. 

“Delicious!” he cried, when a spoonful had 
been cooled down to drinking point. “You’re 
an A-number-one cook.” 

“We make out all right as far as cooking is 
concerned,” the other answered, pleased with the 
compliment. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


17 


“You two do all the housekeeping, don’t you? 
There isn’t a white woman within miles of here, 
I suppose?” 

“There’s a family of pretty well-to-do folks 
that live across the river about three miles down; 
their little girl rides over and looks in on us 
every now and then. But on the whole we 
don’t miss ’em, and John wouldn’t have ’em 
around. He’s a woman-hater. It was all along 
of a woman that we happen to be here.” 

“But how about the little girl?” asked Cardot 
interested. 

“She’s the finest little woman on earth,” the 
old man declared earnestly. 

“The exception that proves the rule,” smiled 
the other, “there’s always an exception, isn’t 
there ?” 

“Oh, I ain’t the fire-eater John is. He’s always 
railin’ and callin’ them the 'curse of mankind.’ 
And we get along pretty well by ourselves. 
We’re set in our ways; we know just what’s 
going to happen the next day and the next day 
after that. The War can rage on, the whole 
world go to pot, and here we’d be collecting some 
of the wreckage of it.” 

“You just said you’d like to help,” reminded 
Cardot. 

The old man raised his head and looked at him 
with level eyes. “You’re right; we’re two old 
frauds. I allow a woman’s influence would have 
worked wonders with us,” he added regretfully. 

“It’s a miracle you’re not barbarians as it is,” 
Cardot was taking the mischievous, nagging 
interest in an elder’s deficiencies. “There’s some 
dispute about the derivation of the word, but I 
always imagined it came from the Latin barba, 
or ‘beard.’” 


18 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“I guess if plenty of hair is any sign, we do 
come pretty close to that,” Eben admitted sheep¬ 
ishly. His tone became more serious. “We’re 
lucky to be on this earth; deserters in wartime 
ain’t always treated with too much courtesy.” 

“Deserters!” 

The old man nodded. 

“You don’t seem to care who knows it,” said 
Cardot amazed. 

“It’s been a long time ago, sonny, and I don’t 
suppose they want us any more—mebbe not, any¬ 
way. When the Civil War broke out, John and 
me joined a New York regiment (we were from 
up-state) and it was one of the first to be sent 
South. I remember just as though it was yes¬ 
terday, a-marching down Broadway and the peo¬ 
ple cheering like mad.” 

He paused and looked impressively at his 
listener. 

“I told you it was on account of a woman that 
we happen to be hidin’ out here—a girl from our 
home town. John and I are twins and I can 
tell you we had many a scrap when we were 
boys over that same girl. We were all three 
raised together, you might say. 

“Well, she was goin’ to a finishing school in 
New York City while we were in camp. She used 
to come out there to see us, looking changed 
and handsome in her smart clothes, and more 
coquettish than ever. Just before we left she 
came out once more, cried and laughed, said she 
loved both of us, told us to fight glorious for the 
Union and for her, and a whole lot of other 
things.” 

Cardot marvelled at these words, and the old 
man’s talk of love. His imagination vaulted the 
years back to the hour when two bashful country 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


19 


boys stood, in the glory of their new uniforms, 
before the capricious mistress of their hearts. 

“Naomi wrote to John and me, usually on the 
same day. If he was to get his letter first, I 
was disappointed and if I got mine first, the poor 
lad would be downhearted all day. Well, the 
war dragged on from year to year; we were in 
camp near Memphis—that was the winter of ’63. 
One day John received a letter and I saw it was 
from Naomi. He looked at me kind of triumph¬ 
antly and opened the envelope slow, though I 
knew his heart was going pitty-pat, like mine 
always did. He hadn’t read very far before he 
turned as pale as the paper in his hand and I 
knew something was wrong. ‘Read this!’ he 
said in a hard voice, handin’ the letter to me. 

“In it she went on to tell how much she 
thought of us, and then wound up by sayin’ that 
by the time that letter reached us she would be 
the wife of another man, a lieutenant, and 
wouldn’t we both congratulate her. I was thun¬ 
derstruck, but John took it awful hard and lay 
down on his cot, white and sick. I never had 
realized before just how serious the matter had 
got. John and I couldn’t both have married the 
girl, could we?” 

“Not very conveniently,” said Cardot. 

“The next morning we were sent with a squad 
on a foragin’ expedition. We surrounded several 
houses and got a few hams out of the smoke¬ 
houses. All the livestock had been driven into 
the swamps and only the Confederates knew 
where to find them. John and I was cornin’ back 
about dusk to join our squad at a farmhouse, 
when all of a sudden he stopped. 

“ ‘Eben,’ says he, in an unnatural voice, ‘I ain’t 
going back.’ 


20 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“'What d’ye mean?’ I says, 'what’s the mat¬ 
ter with ye?’ 

"T just mean what I said; I ain’t going back. 
I’m sick of it all.’ With that he threw his gun 
in a creek and started into the swamp. 

"I shouted and run after him, yellin’ for him 
to halt, but it only made him go faster. When 
I finally come up on him, I begged and pleaded 
with him, telling him of the terrible disgrace to 
the family. He broke down and cried after that 
and when he was calmer he was willin’ to go back. 

“It was getting dark and though we started 
back in the direction we had come, we soon found 
we were lost. We wandered around until we 
were plumb exhausted, breaking through heavy 
underbrush and fordin’ creeks, trying to find our 
way out. Well, sir, it was five days before we 
finally did get out. The insects ’bout ate us alive 
at night and the cold moon looked down tauntin’- 
like, as though to say: 'I see some soldiers 
a-lookin for you two.’ 

“When we got out the swamp we kept a-goin’. 
How we got down here is a long story. We 
traveled mostly by night and managed to dodge 
the rebels; we kept ourselves alive with berries 
and a hog or so that we shot in the woods. So 
you see we are deserters, and then again we 
ain’t.” 

“And the caps?” asked Cardot, puzzled over 
these battered mementoes. 

“We didn’t have any others,” said the old man 
evasively. 

Then Cardot understood; they were the last 
vestiges of what once represented a sturdy 
patriotism. They were symbols. 


Ill 


There is great virtue in wishing and wishing 
hard, a phenomenon which might well cause an 
atheist to wonder whether, after all, there is not 
something in the efficacy of prayer. It behooves 
us to wish for the right things for, right or wrong, 
the chances are that our ardent desires will be 
fulfilled, either with the passage of time or with 
amazing suddenness. 

The old men had started on one of their rare 
visits to town, leaving their guest to entertain 
himself as best he might. Cardot was gaining 
strength but was still too weak to venture out 
very far. 

Through the clear air the break of the surf 
came to his ears in a prolonged sibilant boom, 
repeated monotonously, like the little sounds a 
playful mother makes to delight her child. He 
would have liked to be out there in the sunshine, 
watching the long Atlantic swell roll proudly in. 
He could picture the mischievous foam detaching 
itself from the parent wave to run nimbly up the 
beach, tumble the periwinkles about and set them 
digging frantically into new places. The antics 
of these tiny many-colored mollusks had never 
failed to amuse hm. He longed to stroll slowly 
along the broad, elastic beach, admiring the 
flashing gulls and the shimmering veil of mist 
which draped the distances; but mostly he longed 
for companionship, for the sight and touch of a 
woman. It seemed ages since he had seen one, 
and he smiled as he compared himself to a friend 
who had once told Cardot his sensations on 
21 


22 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


seeing a white woman after six months’ bush¬ 
whacking in Philippine wilds. This man, it 
seemed, had followed her to church and for a 
solid hour could only sit and stare . . . such a 

boon was too great to be vouchsafed him in his 
present situation, he thought. 

The day wore into afternoon. By great good 
fortune he had found a book in the shack with 
which he could while away some of his time, a 
swollen and sea-stained copy of “David Copper- 
field.” On re-reading it had pleased him even 
more than when he had first devoured it as a 
boy, for with its genial characters and comfort¬ 
able illustrations it seemed to have been specially 
designed for his surroundings. He was in Mr. 
Pegotty’s “ark,” momentarily awaiting the return 
of Little Em’ly. 

The door had opened and a flood of sunlight 
filled the room. There was something super¬ 
natural about it, something ethereal, for he had 
heard no footsteps. He sat up and rubbed his 
eyes. Just beyond the threshold a divinity in 
riding habit had paused, startled. 

“You’ve come to the wrong place, haven’t 
you?” Cardot stammered. Surely, he thought, 
such an apparition of delight could have nothing 
in common with this wretched hovel, the dilapida¬ 
tion of which, by contrast, was now complete. 

She smiled with the merest trace of confusion, 
but rather more of amusement and her manner 
became more confident. 

“No,” she answered, “this is the right place. 
Where is Uncle Eben? We heard by ‘grapevine’ 
that he had rescued a man from the sea.” 

“I’m the man from the sea,” said Cardot, still 
gratefully marvelling. “I am thinking of what 
wonders a moment may bring forth. Just before 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


23 


you came in I was literally perishing for com- 
panionship.” 

“I have brought some flowers and fruit along, 
and a few magazines. Back numbers, I’m afraid.” 
She smiled as she placed them on the table. 

“Thanks just the same,” he assured her fer¬ 
vently. 

While she busied herself setting the room in 
order and arranging the flowers in the hitherto 
useless wine bottles his eyes followed her with 
a sick man’s devotion. No detail escaped him 
from the tips of the stoutly laced boots to the 
halo of bright strands escaped from the glory 
of her chestnut hair. 

“You’re from the Middle West,” he announced 
abruptly. He had deduced her nativity from her 
accent and manner; this was a combination of 
brisk wholesomeness, love of the outdoors and 
withal the unmistakable femininity so character¬ 
istic of the girl of the plains. 

“Illinois,” she laughed, still busy with her 
flowers, “though father and I divide our time 
pretty well between Florida and New York City.” 
She was contemplating a magnolia, to which she 
had given a parting touch, with an air of com¬ 
plete abstracton that fascinated him. She left 
the flower abruptly, however, and turned to him 
energetically. “Let me see what I can do to 
make you more comfortable. That looks like a 
mighty hard pillow.” 

He raised his head and she shook out the pil¬ 
low, patted it and replaced it cool and airily frag¬ 
rant from the touch of her hand. He had been 
quick to appreciate this, and also to note with 
approval the wide, brown eyes, soft and deep, 
yet guarding their privacy; the small nose with 


24 THE WALKING WOUNDED 

its faint freckles, and the arresting small red 
mouth. 

“May I not learn the name of my benefactress?” 
he asked doubtfully. He had not entirely satis¬ 
fied himself that his visitor was mundane and 
was actually afraid that if he offended this vision 
in the slightest manner it would vanish into thin 
air. “My name is Jules Cardot.” 

“And mine is Consuela Childers,” she answered 
simply. 

“I feel like a pious fraud, Miss Childers,” he 
said, reassured, “I was sitting up yesterday and 
I suppose I will have to give up my privilege 
of being a sick man.” 

“That’s a pity,” she pouted, “I am contemplat¬ 
ing nursing if father will permit, and you were 
to be my first patient.” 

“In that event I shall most certainly have to 
stage a relapse for you.” 

She smiled whimsically: “Do, please.” 

“You are putting a premium on genteel debility. 
I was on my way home to enlist in the Aviation 
Corps, so you musn’t tempt me.” 

“The Aviation Corps! That’s thrilling,” she 
said. 

“It’s dangerous, too,” insisted Cardot with the 
hurt air of a boy whose adolescent aspirations are 
not fully appreciated. “But above all things,” he 
continued enthusiastically, “it will give me a 
chance to do something worth while, something 
big. I have longed to do that all my life and 
here is my opportunity. In this war the humblest 
doughboy will be what the Spaniards call an 
hidalgo, ‘son of somebody.’ ” 

“I expect to do my bit, too,” with a little toss 
of the head. “The women will have their oppor- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


25 


tunity, also, this time. They won’t be the stay- 
at-homes—at least not all of them.” 

“That’s fine,” he agreed. “I suppose every¬ 
body, at one time or another, burns to do some¬ 
thing that will raise him above the foothills of 
mediocrity. I know there has been a great deal 
of vanity in my ambition. By twenty-five at the 
outside, I had promised myself to be an author 
and a rich man; by that time, too, I was to have 
married the most beautiful and talented woman in 
the world. I was going to be a recluse and a 
student when I wanted to be and a man about 
town when that mood struck me. The latter, 
being the easier, is what I have most achieved, 
and now when I look back on the time I have 
wasted, I am appalled. Yet I have discovered 
that a person can accomplish wonders with just 
a modicum of sustained effort.” 

“You are either up in an airplane or down in 
a well, aren’t you?” she asked archly. “You are 
young. You still have time . . 

“No, I haven’t,” he broke in. “I am still on the 
right side of thirty, but I wouldn’t for worlds 
delude myself that I have any too much time on 
my hands. A man of my age becomes well 
acquainted with his limitations. Begins to learn 
what he can do, and what he can’t do, and just 
what he can expect of himself under the best 
conditions. He is generally disillusioned and 
penitent by that time—I know I am. I also know 
right from wrong; yet that doesn’t prevent me 
from straying occasionally from the straight and 
narrow path. No, Miss Childers,” he finished 
earnestly, “I don’t want to be a chaos any longer. 
I must produce if it is but the ‘pitifullest infin¬ 
itesimal fraction of a product.’ ” 

She was nursing a knee of her corduroy 


26 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


trousers and listening with the flattering atten¬ 
tion that makes complaining schoolboys of men. 
She had the answer to the riddle ready for him. 

“You should have married early and had some 
one to take care of you and direct your energies 
along the right channel. A good woman would 
have done that.” 

“I know,” he said soberly, “but it seems I have 
always been waiting for the apotheosis of love to 
come to me—the kind they fill books with. Not 
that I haven’t been in love; I’m half-way in love 
right now! Or all the way, if you’ll accept the 
amendment. It’s a patient’s license to fall in 
love with his nurse, isn’t it?” He watched her 
closely for the sign to advance or retreat, such 
being the first feint in the average American 
courtship which begins not in Heaven, or con¬ 
clave of parents, but in flirtation between 
strangers. 

“I suppose that’s your privilege,” she replied 
coolly. 

Not unduly encouraged he continued, seeking 
to draw her fire: 

“I have been in love any number of times. 
I have been swept off my feet by a pretty face; 
sometimes it was a pretty ankle. That’s what 
many people think of as love, and what more 
marriages in America are based on than you 
may perhaps imagine. That’s one reason, I pre¬ 
sume, why I haven’t married—because I can’t 
exalt a union which has that as a foundation to 
the eminence of a sacred institution; in other 
words, I can’t idealize it. So,” he shrugged, 
“there you are.” 

“You just haven’t met the right woman,” she 
said softly. She had listened intently with a 
mixture of sympathy and amusement in her eyes. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


27 


Cardot stared his admiration. Was she an actress, 
and this a role she was playing? At any rate, 
he told himself, here was his idea of beauty in 
woman: animation first, high animal spirits tem¬ 
pered by intellect and understanding. And she 
was good to look upon. Her features were 
regular, her teeth sound and white; yes, she 
was beautiful, but there was nothing of the in¬ 
sipidity that attaches to fair beauties. She con¬ 
sulted a mannish leather wrist-watch and rose. 

“You’re not going?” he asked, and she laughed 
at his tone of dismay. 

“Yes, I have to. Father will be wondering 
what has become of me. I have some orders, 
now, that I wish obeyed,” she said authorita¬ 
tively. “In the first place, you are not to leave 
until I have called again. Then, perhaps, I’ll 
discharge you as a well man.” 

“Unless you return soon, I’ll be on my way. 
I’m sound as a dollar now.” 

“Very well,” she agreed carelessly. “I’ll say 
good-bye then.” She stood a moment, her lithe 
figure framed in the doorway, a modern Diana, 
whose clothes served rather to accentuate her 
grace. 

“Just a minute,” he called after her; it had 
taken an appreciable space of time to summon 
his courage. “Suppose I look you up before I 
leave; I have to hear from home first, anyway.” 

“That will be capital!” she exclaimed delighted¬ 
ly, coming back beside the bunk. “Oh, I have 
it. I’ll call for you with the buggy tomorrow. 
You can visit with father and me until you feel 
able to travel.” 

“It sounds too good to be true.” He could 
hardly believe the evidence of his ears. “I’ll be 


28 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


happy to accept, if you don’t think I’ll be in the 
way. Hadn’t you better ask your father?” 

She laughed shortly. Parental consent was 
apparently a minor consideration to this daugh¬ 
ter of the Twentieth Century. 

“Dad never interferes with anything I want 
to do. He’s the dearest old thing.” 

“I’m sure he must be,” he agreed. Her atti¬ 
tude now was expressive of buoyant comraderie. 
Cardot, in a transport of delight, found himself 
gazing at the firm white hand and supple fingers 
that held the riding crop, wondering if he might 
reach forth and hold it, and before he realized 
it, his desire was an accomplished fact. She 
yielded her hand naturally and with no trace of 
shyness or embarrassment. 

After a moment of silence, she said: “I must 
be going. I’ll see you again tomorrow.” 

He heard her picking her way over the litter 
outside and with a sense of sweet fatigue occa¬ 
sioned by the excitement of her visit, he turned 
to the wall of his bunk. He closed his eyes and 
opened them with a start. No, it hadn’t been a 
dream. It was actual reality. He rehearsed all 
the incidents from the time he had been thrown 
into the sea; then from the time he had em¬ 
barked before the mast (it took but the fraction 
of a second longer) to this morning’s visit. They 
were all in sequence. “Romance has sought me 
out in this little hut,” he mused in a dazed man¬ 
ner. “Here of all places I meet the woman of all 
women.” And then in as brief a space of time 
he projected his life—their lives—into the very 
imminent future. War shorn of all its glamour, 
soldiers bagging their prey with sardonic cruelty, 
tangled heaps of massacred humanity, twisted 
burning planes fallen to earth, the funeral pyres 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


29 


of their pilots. . . . Consuela a war-bride; 

Consuela in widow’s weeds. It was no time for 
happy thoughts of a home with her at his side, 
with such a terrifying background. He laughed 
and chided himself. Why should he imagine 
these wild things? It was absurd, in the first 
place, to think of this exquisite woman as the 
wife of an outcast. He would live only in the 
present, that was the war-philosophy he had 
evolved for himself anyway, and the immediate 
prospects were very pleasant. He murmured her 
euphonious name again and fell asleep. 

“I didn’t aim to wake you up,” said Uncle 
Eben, though Cardot was inclined to doubt his 
word. “What do all these things mean?” he de¬ 
manded with a well-simulated appearance of 
wrath. With his leonine hair, it required but 
little affectation to give him a ferocious mien. 

“It means we have had a visitor, Watson,” 
smiled Cardot. 

“A woman?” 

“A lady—Miss Childers,” Cardot corrected. 

“Oh, her,” he growled, much in the manner of 
a pacified mastiff. Cardot sensed the old man’s 
quick feeling of gratitude for her attentions to 
his protege. 


IV 


As Consuela’s horse picked its clean-footed way 
homeward her heart exulted and the mist of joy 
that filmed her eyes made everything appear 
gloriously unreal. It was altogether a different 
world from that in which she had begun the day; 
the sun drinking up the water of the sea over 
the breasts of the sand dunes was the revelation 
of sublime love, such an image as she had seen 
depicted in the family Bible at home, and as she 
looked to the golden rim of the clouds, she almost 
expected to see the Archangel standing there 
with outstretched, welcoming arms. 

Some women find their mates among the ranks 
of the “good providers’’ and are content; many 
more succumb to ardent wooing—the biological 
eagerness of the male; others sacrifice themselves 
to their vanity and thus dispel the fear of the 
dull tragedy of spinsterhood. But into the lives 
of others their man is cast like the shipwrecked 
sailor; for him they have kept their lamp trimmed 
and burning against his arrival. 

The admirers of such women may be legion. 
They generally have the appeal of their sex in a 
high degree; but though, in our superficial 
society, they encourage men and play the game, 
yet they repel before it is too late. Their ideal 
looms vividly before them in the crisis and the 
attentions of the man before them become hateful. 

It mattered not a whit to her that she had 
known Cardot only a brief hour. She did not 
know his origin, nor would that have mattered. 
There was in her soul the transcendent radiance 
30 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


31 


of original insight—woman’s intuition—that here 
at last was the man for whom she had waited. 
And on the morrow he was to come to her home; 
the same roof would cover them at night. A 
smile of confidence lingered on her lips as she 
spurred her horse into a gallop. Her plans were 
consummated; he would be grappled to her soul 
before he left; there was not in her mind the 
slightest doubt of her ability to do this. 

Cardot was waiting for Consuela as she drove 
up outside the enclosure in a mule-drawn buggy. 
She came inside as he was making his adieux 
and thanking the two old men. “Well,” she an¬ 
nounced, “here I am!” Neither Eben nor John 
exhibited any hostility, but on the contrary 
beamed their approval, maintaining a tongue-tied ' 
silence. Finally Uncle Eben said: “You’re in 
mighty good hands, my lad.” 

“I’ll bring him back to see you before he 
leaves,” she answered. 

“This is my horseless carriage,” said Consuela, 
as Cardot went through the motions of helping 
her in, just managing to touch her elbow before 
she had gained the seat. The mule looked back 
at him with the slow scorn of an old-timer. 

“Are you feeling better today?” she asked, 
after she had coaxed the animal into movement. 

“Very much, thank you, but I am determined 
to remain a convalescent until I learn your fur¬ 
ther orders.” 

“Which are that you hurry and get well. The 
moon is wonderful on the beach and we have 
swimming parties almost every night.” 

“And I am to be included?” he asked almost 
breathlessly. “That is certainly incentive for 
rapid recovery.” 


32 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Her animated features were betraying the 
pleasure she felt in his company. He wondered 
if he read them aright, and then the uncomfort¬ 
able thought crossed his mind that he was merely 
the victim of a fantastic whim of an impulsive 
young lady. He would be placed on exhibition 
before her father and friends and when her in¬ 
terest lagged, either through satiety or the ridi¬ 
cule of others, she would release him much as he 
had released gophers imprisoned in his boyhood 
days. He had no evidence on which to base such 
a conclusion so he was surprised at the tenacity 
of the idea. 

The mule was pulling the monotonously creak¬ 
ing buggy through a jungle of cypress, bay and 
sweet gum trees, the cypress lofty and bearded 
with moss, the smaller growth that lined the road 
at their base a pageant of color. 

“They look like old men with fancy neckties, 
don’t they?” she said to break the silence. 

“They do, at that,” he smiled. “Just as the 
two hermits might look decked out in store- 
bought clothes. But tell me,” he asked anxiously, 
as the lurking doubt recurred to his mind, “don’t 
you feel that you are taking chances in bring¬ 
ing home a stray dog like myself? Are you in 
the habit of doing things like this?” 

“My first offense,” she assured him lightly, 
“but why should I feel that I am taking any 
chances ?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose women are 
better judges of men than men are of women. 
Perhaps men are more of a staple article. But 
I don’t understand for the life of me what would 
interest you the least bit in me.” He was really 
curious to know. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


33 


“Well,” she drawled, giving him a timid side- 
wise glance, “in the first place you are nice.” 

He laughed aloud in the pure joy that this 
naive statement gave him. 

“That means, I suppose, that I am fastidious, 
refined or pleasing to the palate.” 

“Pleasing to the palate?” she repeated redden¬ 
ing. “I mean you are rather nice to have 
around.” 

“That’s very kind of you,” he replied grate¬ 
fully. He refrained from expressing reciprocal 
sentiments, fearing that they might appear 
fulsome. 

They had emerged from the jungle into a 
sweet-scented forest of virgin pine, the floor of 
which was thickly carpeted with brittle needles 
crackling under the sharp wheels of the buggy. 

“This is father’s grove,” said Consuela. “He 
has never boxed it for turpentine. I wouldn’t 
let him.” 

“It’s wonderful and peaceful,” he agreed, a 
tinge of dejection in his voice. “It hardly seems 
possible that people can be tearing at each other’s 
throats in other parts of the world.” The in¬ 
cubus of fire, sackings and butcheries—of civiliza¬ 
tion gone to pot—seemed always to assail him 
with greater vigor amid the eternal harmonies 
of nature, land or sea. 

“There’s our house,” said Consuela, pointing 
with her whip to a clump of orange trees sur¬ 
mounted by a roof. Cardot was vaguely disap¬ 
pointed at its unpretentiousness; somehow or 
other he had prepared himself for a colonial 
mansion, lording the woods with a chaste pillared 
eminence. It proved to be a cottage, white with 
green trimmings. Before it bloomed oleanders, 
hibiscus and guavas; to the rear he could see 


34 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


chickens, shaking and dusting themselves in the 
sand in the hot shade of the orange trees. With 
the exception of the small home plot there was 
no cultivated or cleared land in sight; just the 
clean pine grove stretching upward to the house 
and sloping gently downward from the front 
of it. 

A portly man in vest and shirt-sleeves came 
from the opposite side of the house, examined 
some shrubbery intently and then looked up in 
the direction of the buggy. 

“That’s Dad,” said Consuela, giving the reins 
an embarrassed tug. 

Her father waited for them, assisted his daugh¬ 
ter to alight and then thrust a large, speckled 
and sandy-haired hand to Cardot. 

“The pestle-tail brought you home, did he, 
Peggy?” he asked bluffly. “Glad to meet you, 
sir.” 

“This is Mr. Cardot, father,” said Consuela, 
not to be cheated out of a proper introduction. 

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cardot.” He mount¬ 
ed the steps ahead of them. “Come right in.” 

He strode through the room, put aside, with 
a brittle sound, some bamboo hangings and 
passed into the hall. Consuela excused herself. 
“I have to see how dinner is progressing,” she 
explained. 

Cardot seated himself rather helplessly in the 
combination living-room and library and, picking 
up a magazine, turned over the leaves in a 
desultory manner. There was within him a little 
sense of anti-climax; Consuela, the Lady Bounti¬ 
ful, ranging the “moors” and the desert places, 
emerged not from an ancestral estate, but from 
a very matter-of-fact stable yard at the rear of 
a snug cottage. He had an uncomfortable feeling 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


35 


that the Consuela of faultless riding clothes was 
a pose, a feeling which he immediately and in¬ 
dignantly stifled, chiding himself unmercifully 
for permitting such an idea to be harbored for an 
instant. A second later he had translated this 
imperfection into a lovable feminine frailty, path¬ 
etically small and helpless when contrasted with 
his own mountainous heap of besetting sins and 
weaknesses. After all, were not the whole world 
jongleurs and actors? 

He put down his magazine and looked about 
the room. It was large and comfortable and what 
its name implied—a living-room. Unfinished 
fancy work lay on the stained-oak mission table, 
while the racks beneath were crowded with 
periodicals, among which Cardot discerned movie 
pictorials, the National Geographic, and several 
drear varieties of farm magazine. The inevitable 
mail order catalogue was there also. Spaced 
around the wall stood three dissimilar bookcases. 
One contained a faultless set of classics, a com¬ 
pendium of ancient and modern literature, which 
the visitor imagined must be “uncut gems,” while 
the others held small sets and a heterogeneous 
mixture of best sellers, college textbooks, works 
on animal surgery, and nondescripts. There was 
a what-not cabinet, rescued apparently from the 
grim parlor of a generation back, and a large 
brick hearth with substantial fire-dogs. Of the 
large denim-covered divan with its profusion of 
embroidered sofa pillows, Cardot entirely ap¬ 
proved. 

The latticed door in the rear banged and he 
heard the voice of the master calling down im¬ 
precations on the epidermis of one of his 
laborers. 

“Darn your hide, Jim, you mean to tell me 


36 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


you haven’t put the spokes in that wheel yet?” 
he vociferated. “I asked you particularly to 
finish that job today. What in the world’s got 
into you lately? I swear . . 

“Now, bossman,” the wheedling negro began, 
“I jes’ ain’t had the time; now, Mister Dan, that’s 
a fact, sure as I’se a foot high. But I’ll git to it 
before sundown; she’ll be ready to ride tomor¬ 
row.” 

“You haven’t had anything but time. All right, 
if that job isn’t finished by this time tomorrow, 
I’m going to run you so far from this place, it’ll 
take you a year to walk back.” 

Jim guffawed loudly and Cardot heard the door 
close on a dimuendo of his laughter. Presently 
Jim’s voice came again: “Mister Dan, you doan 
want dem old shoes, does you? If I’se gwine to 
have to walk for a year, I’se sure gwine need 
some shoes.” 

“Those are my fishing shoes, Jim,” Mr. Dan 
answered. “Besides, they wouldn’t fit you.” 

“I’ll make ’em fit,” said the darkey confidently. 

“Well, go ahead, take ’em,” the other con¬ 
sented. 

Mr. Childers entered, redolent of yellow soap, 
and took his seat heavily. “Mr. Cardot, the 
good niggers have all left the South; all gone 
East to work in the munition plants. That Jim,” 
he continued, looking up at his daughter who had 
come in and seated herself on the arm of his 
chair, “is becoming more shiftless every day.” 

“Yes, old dear,” she replied as she ran her 
fingers soothingly through his iron-grey hair, “I 
heard what you had to say to him. Do you 
know you gave him one of the few decent pairs 
of shoes you have left?” 

Dinner was announced at this juncture and they 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


37 


adjourned to the dining-room. Consuela pre¬ 
sided anxiously, apologizing for the shortcomings 
of a wall-eyed and thin-shanked negro girl that 
she had hastily impressed into service, disguising 
her as a maid by impaling a white linen cap on 
her tufts of wool. 

Cardot ate almost voraciously of the abundant 
fried chicken and white-brown biscuits, gener¬ 
ously spread with wild honey in its comb, of 
which there was a great quantity in an immense 
earthenware bowl on the table. 

“We cut a bee-tree a few days ago,” explained 
Mr. Childers, “I reckon John the Baptist didn’t 
fare so badly in the wilderness when he had to 
make out on wild honey.” 

“No, indeed,” said Cardot. “What I could 
never understand was what he could see in 
locusts as an article of diet.” 

“Oh, they used them right along in the early 
days,” replied the other. “They pulled off the 
legs and wings and roasted them. They ate them 
stewed, boiled, fried, and ground up and made 
into cakes. There was a Libyan nation, men¬ 
tioned by Herodotus, that ate them with milk, 
just as we eat our cereals today.” 

Cardot stared his amazement at this fountain¬ 
head of information opened before him. Con¬ 
suela laughed with twinkling eyes, “They call 
Dad a ‘walking encyclopedia’ around here,” she 
said. 

The meal Was at an end and the dishes cleared 
away. 

“Do you smoke?” asked the host in a genial 
post-prandial tone, “I’ve got a Cuban fellow down 
in Tampa that sends me up some cigars that 
the cigarmakers make for themselves, so they 
ought to be good. At least, I like them first- 


38 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


rate.” He was fumbling in a cupboard drawer 
and finally extracted two large, loosely-rolled 
black cigars from a paper sack. “Now, let’s 
adjourn to the porch,” he suggested when they 
had them lit. “It’s cooler out there.” 

Later in the afternoon Consuela proposed a 
ride and Jim at her request hitched up Janus, 
the mule, and brought him to the front of the 
house. 

“We’ll go to Mirror Springs—that’s not far 
from here. You see, I don’t want to tax your 
strength.” 

“Don’t worry about me, young lady,” he said 
appreciatively, although in reality he was fight¬ 
ing off, as best he could, a languor brought on 
by the exertions of the day. 

Consuela took the reins and when they had 
started, she saw that he had brought a book 
along. “What is it?” she asked. 

“It’s the ‘book of verse,’ ” he answered apolo¬ 
getically. “I was reading it, but didn’t intend to 
take it with us.” 

“Perhaps we’ll have a chance to read a poem 
or two.” 

He stole another admiring glance, recognizing 
instinctively a fellow of the freemasonry of book- 
lovers. Indeed, she was splendid, this self-reliant, 
unconscious Diana of the pines. 

A mile or so through the flat-woods and they 
came suddenly to a hard road, on which Janus’ 
hoofs began a sharp tattoo. Above them young 
orange groves were prettily set in the side of 
a hill. Then Consuela pulled the mule into the 
sand-road again and on through a jungle of palm 
and magnolia to the sward which bordered a 
deep crystal spring, a veritable underground river, 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


39 


whose surplus waters flowed off in a wide stream. 

Here they climbed eagerly out and walked to 
the bank where they stood looking into the clear, 
cool depths, down where a fallen oak lay sub¬ 
merged, long since coated with milk-white flageo¬ 
lets of sulphurous moss which fluttered in the 
upcoming water. Fish were swimming fearlessly 
around and a large Florida trout came close and 
turned saucy eyes at them. 

“The rascal knows we haven’t any fishing 
tackle with us,” smiled Cardot. 

“Shall we sit down and read our book?” asked 
Consuela. 

“Fine,” he agreed, and they found a place on 
the soft level grass. 

“Now,” she said, “what poem shall we have, 
which is your favorite?” 

“Oh, any of them,” he replied neutrally. “Let’s 
open the book at random.” 

It was an anthology of British poets of the 
nineteenth century. She opened to Keats’ “Ode 
on a Grecian Urn,” and began to read in a quiet 
and unaffected voice: 

Thou still unravished bride of quietness, 

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 

Sylvan historian, who can’st thus express 
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 
Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

In Tempe or the Dales of Arcady? 

What men or Gods are these? What maidens loth? 
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? 

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy? 

Cardot shifted his position and stretched out 
on his side, resting his head on his hand. 

“Are you quite comfortable?” she asked solicit¬ 
ously. 

“Quite,” he answered. “Just a bit tired.” 


40 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“You poor thing!” compassionately. “Perhaps 
we’ve overdone.” 

“No, I think not,” he said. He was a little 
provoked at being forced to admit his fatigue, 
but looked rather longingly at the plaid of her 
skirt, thinking of the luxury of resting his head 
there. 

“Might I—would you object?” he faltered, 
dreading a refusal. 

“No, of course not,” she consented quietly, and 
when he has disposed himself to his entire satis¬ 
faction, she continued: 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; 

Not to the sensual ear, but more endear’d, 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou can’st not leave 
Thy song, nor even can those trees be bare; 

Bold lover, never, never can’st thou kiss 
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; 

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair. 

Thereafter the verses became a jumble of 
phrases to him and he wandered into a forest of 
sleep, peopled by the pale shades of gods and 
heroes. When he awoke he felt certain he had 
dozed only a few minutes and that it was the 
silken touch of her sleeve as she put down the 
book that stimulated him to consciousness. She 
was looking abstractedly across the spring and 
crooning softly to herself. He gazed for a 
moment at her face with its youthful freshness, 
yet indefinable charm of maturity; at the deter¬ 
mined angle of her chin. Then he raised his 
head and apologized. 

She smiled indulgently. “That’s the only time 
men are ever contented—when they’re asleep,” 
she said. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


41 


“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he parried 
good-humoredly, “I feel refreshed, but I’m afraid 
I’ve proven an ungallant protege.” 

A white heron flapped noisily down the quiet 
stream to the woods on the opposite bank; the 
face of the pool at their feet grew sombre. The 
afternoon stillness was succeeded by the shrill 
screeching of birds and an intermittent bellow¬ 
ing which they both agreed must be a bull alli¬ 
gator, deep in the swamp. 

They drove home in the flashing sunset, where 
clouds and colors seemed grouped about the sun 
like an ensemble for the final scene of the day. 

Neither spoke, until the silence began to be 
embarrassing. He was wondering how he could 
tell her how much pleasure he found in her com¬ 
panionship; he wanted to explain how different 
she was from other girls he had known. 

“I hope today hasn’t been too hard on you,” 
she said finally. 

“Hard!” he answered emphatically. “I have 
never passed a better; it’s been like a dream.” 
Still he could not summon courage to express 
his thoughts to her. He remembered the chance 
facetious remark of the day before when he had 
told her that he was half-way, if not entirely, in 
love with her, and wondered why he could not 
repeat it today. No, he decided, it would be 
both overbold and ungrateful—just the same, 
there would be much truth in it. 


V 


When Cardot first thought of directing his 
footsteps homeward to the United States, after 
his estrangement of three years, there was in his 
heart a fibre of bitterness, a sulky resentment, 
sin.li as a punished child might have for the 
castigating parent, which was in reality the pique 
of disappointment. Consciously, he blamed him¬ 
self for all his shortcomings; subconsciously, the 
country of his origin was colored by the jaundice 
of his failure. This petulant state of mind was 
not by any means stable, for usually when his 
grievances rose thickest before him there came 
tidal waves of tender emotion to sweep them 
away and purify his memory. 

The urge to return became strong when the 
conflagration in Europe got well under way and 
he saw that the struggle was going to be long 
and disastrous. It was a time when many a 
neutral traveler sought the security of his own 
rooftree, but the corps of American and English 
surveyors with whom Cardot was engaged in the 
capacity of recorder could not then conveniently 
spare him. They so informed him when he once 
suggested that he should be fighting with the 
French, being of French descent on his father’s 
side and a bundle of mixed race-memories. He 
loved France passionately, as, it is said, every 
one does, but he was thankful to be able to lay 
the unction of a good excuse to his soul when he 
saw what a welter of blood the War was becom¬ 
ing. He deplored the canker of fear and inde¬ 
cision which, at bottom, was deterring him from 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


43 


entering the lists, and devoutly promised himself 
that should the United States be drawn in he 
would make amends by immediately returning 
and enlisting in the Aviation Corps, the branch 
of the service which, he felt, would exact the 
greatest courage and would lead him quickest to 
the front. 

Time and the War had almost effaced the sense 
of defeat that had caused him to chose between 
suicide and South America. Young, and loving 
life, he had chosen the latter and brought with 
him his own anathemas and self-chastisement. 
What he had done to deserve all this involved 
matters purely personal to himself, sins of omis¬ 
sion mainly which might be peccadilloes to many 
others. The culmination came with his failure 
at the end of a college year. 

In the first place he had indulged too long and 
often in day-dreams. Then, in a fatal moment, 
one of his professors had praised him for a little 
spurt of work he had done. From that incident 
his egotism waxed great and was nourished to a 
point where he felt himself endowed with superior 
mental gifts that raised him above the level of 
the poor fellows who had to “bone” for what 
they learned. He, being favored of the gods, 
could loiter as long as he wished in Utopia and 
then, just before examinations, cover the subject 
with a minimum of effort and dazzle the class 
with his brilliance. The old story of the hare 
and tortoise points the same moral. To dream 
is easier than to do, and so, even while he was 
imbued with lofty aspirations, fiercely ambitious, 
the driving force of his energy was not sustained 
and the borderlands of fancy became more and 
more alluring. 

Cardot consistently maintained through his first 


44 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


college year a stringent and austere idealism. Sir 
Toby might have been tempted to exclaim of 
him: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, 
there shall be no more cakes and ale?” He still 
held lofty opinions of women. He could not abide 
the men who made lecherous subjects the bur¬ 
den of their conversation, and those who bragged 
of amorous successes he put down as bald-faced 
liars. Nor could he associate the profound, 
beatific mystery of birth, in which man came 
“trailing clouds of glory,” with ugly stories. How, 
he pondered, could the holy state of marriage 
have anything in common with the gratification 
of the base carnal desires of men? 

He had set an exacting standard for himself. 
Though not wishing to impose it on others, fear¬ 
ing to appear immature or unmanly, he still 
found the stories disturbing and degrading. Reso¬ 
lutely he tried the life of a recluse for a while, 
shutting himself in his little dormitory room and 
denying, as far as was possible, human com¬ 
panionship. He figured that by this process he 
would be enabled to drink more deeply at the 
Pierian Spring, but his periods of isolation proved 
opportunities for more chimerical extravaganzas, 
in which sex-phantasies irresistibly found expres¬ 
sion. 

When his imagination had free rein, a certain 
little girl of his puppy-love days, whom he had 
worshipped at a distance, became his Beatrice and 
the central figure of his visions. Out of a shad¬ 
owy realm, whose ghost-like trees waved frond 
on frond, pale lords and ladies would come forth 
from a castle; there were deeds of prowess, jousts 
and battles; the rescue of a glove at tremendous 
risk and a smile earned from the lady. 

There were rugged mountain scenes—always 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


45 


with a snowbound hut in the valley. The smoke 
from its chimney, rising upward like incense in 
the rare atmosphere, was from his own hearth, 
before which he sat, one hand on his faithful St. 
Bernard, in the other a volume of his favorite 
author. But ere long the figure of his adored one 
was sure to steal in and take her place on the 
arm of his chair as his fireside companion. 

While airplanes were still in the experimental 
stage he had flown over mountains, cities and 
plains in a huge white bird of his invention. The 
turning of a few valves and the pulling of a lever 
would put the ornithopter in flight; the eyes of 
the feathered giant were the windows of his 
chart-house, and while he controlled this won¬ 
derful creature of his imagination, the one woman 
was beside him, feasting her eyes on her beloved 
egotist. 

The mist would clear and before him the stern, 
matter-of-fact book of economics would still lie, 
opened, perhaps, at the chapter on the “Law of 
Diminishing Values.” He had read three sen¬ 
tences and did not know what they contained. 

He would shake himself together mentally and 
exclaim: “This will not do at all.” 

Once, having heard of the oracular virtues of 
bibliomancy, he had opened at random a book 
lying on his table. It was “The Choir Invisible,” 
borrowed from the library for week-end reading. 
The sentence which caught his attention was the 
following: “Who does not take pride in his navy, 
sweeping the high seas of the imagination, but 
too often departed for some foreign port when 
the coast defenses need protecting.” 

At other times, fierce desires which would not 
obediently stay in their places erupted, throwing 
the dross of his nature to the surface like vapors 


46 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


from a seething cauldron. He burned with shame 
that he could not keep these in due bounds; he 
prayed for surcease from them, rendering lip- 
service, rather, by repeating: “God help me! God 
help me!” like the condemned criminal, but his 
torments were not softened a whit. A leering 
phantom spake: “There is no God, or, if there is, 
who is He to help you? If He made you, He en¬ 
dowed you with the very passions from which 
you seek relief. They are yours to use and enjoy. 
. . .” And in an hour of cynicism he went 

forth and committed himself. 

Having sown the act, he reaped the habit, and 
having sown the habit he reaped a character. 
From being a young man of exemplary conduct, 
he slid downward by easy stages until he was 
classed with the college roues, his virtue, “heaped 
up in youth and hoarded for age,” irretrievably 
gone. He became bitter, insouciant, slovenly, 
taking less and less interest in his studies; yet 
the spectre of failure in any of the subjects he 
was carrying frightened him at any time into 
spasmodic studying. As often as he might sleep 
with textbooks under his pillows, his hope of 
unconscious cerebration proved vain. 

The day came when he came down to Butler 
Hall, where the results of the mid-term examina¬ 
tions were posted, and found not only that he 
had failed miserably in Economics, in which he 
was not sure of himself, but that he was con¬ 
ditioned in one of the English Literature courses. 
Here he had considered himself impregnable, 
and his heart failed him. 

That day he vowed he would mend his ways. 
Over and over again he told himself: “It shall not 
happen again! I will put forth my best efforts 
and overcome the handicap.” He felt a certain 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


47 


grim pleasure in the anticipation of the struggle 
for which he was girding his loins about and for 
the first two weeks of the new term he drove 
himself mercilessly. He kept his nose in his 
books, fighting zealously his constitutional pro¬ 
pensity to dream, but he soon discovered to his 
dismay that he could not get to the bottom of 
the subject or retain what he had read. He had 
no power to concentrate in spite of his best will. 

Defeat seemed to have him in its clutches, for 
no matter to what pitch he might work up his 
impulse to achieve, still it was never met by a 
corresponding energy. Paralysis gripped his 
faculties; his habits tyrannized over him and 
held him at their mercy. 

The long term was dragging to a close and 
most of the examinations were over. The stu¬ 
dents lay in groups under the full-leaved, placid 
sugar maples, discussing with a languid joy the 
coming finals and the crowning event, the 
Graduation Ball. He felt unspeakably alien in 
this place; even the humbler men in school, men 
whom he had despised, though unconsciously and 
unwillingly, had made all of their courses, and 
now passed Cardot on the street with a smile of 
superiority. He had failed again in the same two 
subjects. 

The thought of his return home and the 
inevitable facing of his parents, stigmatized as 
he felt he was with the disgrace of failure, 
grew from a small worry into a towering mental 
obsession. There was no use in his lingering 
longer at college, he might as well board the 
train and go somewhere; he should start for 
home and have it over. 

It was a thousand-mile journey and all but the 
last mile had been run. His heart was palpitating 


48 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


wildly, the outskirts of the town had been reached 
and his doom could not be postponed much 
longer. 

He caught a glimpse of the masts in the harbor 
and his indecision suddenly left him. With a 
surge of courageous impulse, he told himself it 
was not yet too late. The train would stop in 
a minute at the last crossing before rolling into 
the station. Hurriedly he pulled his suitcase from 
beneath the seat, jammed his hat on his head 
and, as the train slowed down, swung himself to 
the ground and made his way determinedly to 
the busy wharves. 

There were all kinds of ships: schooners with 
rakish sticks; stolid, square-rigged barks; majes¬ 
tic steel vessels, moving their tentacled cargo 
booms with the deliberateness of giant crus¬ 
taceans. In and out among them sturdy little 
tugs swaggered with the air of importance as¬ 
sumed by opinionated men of small stature; sun¬ 
burned and tattooed sailors sculled dories across 
the oily channel. This was the canvas that had 
thrilled him in his boyhood days when he had 
traded stamps with the sailors; these were the 
vessels on which he had passed in imagination 
from his dull microcosm into the unknown world 
lying beyond the blue horizon of the day. That 
evening he crossed the bar as deck-hand on a 
schooner bound for Santiago, Cuba. 


VI 


Three days had passed with startling rapidity 
in the idyllic atmosphere of Pine Crest, a name 
which Cardot discovered written in nickle-plated 
studs on a rustic arch at the roadside. He had 
seen a great deal of Consuela in this time; they 
had taken a long horseback trip together and 
lunched in the woods; they had gone for a dip 
in the pounding surf. In this time they had 
moralized and philosophized and talked of many 
things. They had become inseparable compan¬ 
ions, but Cardot began to have an uncomfortable 
feeling that he was perhaps wearing out his 
welcome. He was therefore vastly relieved when 
Dan Childers told him he had a job for him. 

“I need a bookkeeper and general utility man 
at the commissary,” he said as he pulled the after¬ 
supper bag of cigars out of the drawer and 
handed one to his guest. “How about it? It’s 
a stepping-stone to being a good woodsman.” 

Cardot accepted and Consuela beamed grate¬ 
fully at her father. 

The following day he entered on his duties, 
which were light enough and easily mastered. 
Childers and he found plenty of time for chatting 
and discussing world events. Between the two 
there had sprung up the mutual liking of two 
frank men; back in Jules’ recollection some one 
had once said: “You can trust a man named 
Dan.” But the days dragged and he became 
contented only when after hours his horse quick¬ 
ened its pace homeward. 

In the evenings he read to Consuela and 
49 


50 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


together they laughed at characters and dis¬ 
cussed situations which they mutually recognized. 
She had a gift of laughter which he loved, but 
which was at the same time just a bit disconcert¬ 
ing. He wondered whether she might not laugh 
at him if he should take it into his head to be¬ 
come serious. He kept thinking that he might 
let himself go much further, but ideas of matri¬ 
mony were always relegated to a romantic back¬ 
ground by a complex of opposing reflections, 
which he unconsciously lowered as a kind of dim¬ 
ming curtain. He indulged in the luxury of 
sneering at himself and then applying the balm 
of self pity. “What have you, a social pariah, to 
offer this fine girl?” he argued, and again melo¬ 
dramatic pictures of the War would arise. He 
would soon be in the army, he told himself, so 
what would be the use? War brides he consid¬ 
ered part of the frenzy of the European holocaust 
and could not approve of them, nor did he like 
to think of Peggy, his widow, re-marrying some 
returned hero. 

As a matter of fact, he was enjoying the 
Platonic aspect of their friendship, or love, since 
it was more than friendship. Their childish con¬ 
fidences thrilled him and he was moved to a 
chivalrous exultation by the thought of being her 
spotless knight and protector, conforming to the 
dearly-beloved precedents of Anglo-Saxon litera¬ 
ture and tradition. Thus he remained snugly 
oblivious of the yearning passion which Consuela 
concealed within her. 

On her part, she patiently awaited the sign. 
True she did, on the occasion of a dance at the 
hotel in town to which Cardot had escorted her, 
deliberately render him miserable and put him 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


51 


in a torture of jealousy by a generous distribu¬ 
tion of her dances among her older acquaintances. 
He watched her enviously out of the corner of 
his eye as she floated joyously from arm to arm; 
he appraised her anew in satin pumps and dainty 
evening dress and lost all interest in his partner 
of the moment. Consuela did not slight him; 
simply made him dubious of his fee simple title. 

President Wilson made an end of note-writing, 
and War, the inevitable, was declared. Cardot 
and Childers were discussing the impending entry 
of the United States when the mail and news¬ 
papers were brought in. 

Childers drew a deep breath as he displayed 
the scarehead: WAR IS DECLARED, stretching 
in red across the page. “Well,” he said, “it’s 
all over but the shouting.” 

“All over but the shouting,” Cardot echoed 
hollowly. He stepped out on the little platform 
before the door. While this was the consumma¬ 
tion momentarily expected, he was amazed at 
the disquietude brought to him by the actual fact. 
His heart began to beat dismally against his ribs 
and in the pit of his stomach he felt a sensation 
of mingled fear and pity for the whole breed of 
bloodthirsty men whose lust to kill reeks through 
the pages of history and legend, so that centuries 
of civilization have failed to gloss it over with the 
thinnest veneer. It seemed as though the whole¬ 
some atmosphere were suddenly diffused with 
the venom of hatred and in the drowsy soughing 
of the pines he imagined he heard a bitter note 
of implacable irony. 

Later in the day, as though infected by this 
poison of hostility, two of the negro hands came 
to blows after a short argument and began stolidly 


52 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


slamming and slugging each other after the 
fashion of black men, their only sound the im¬ 
pacts on their leathery hides. Soon the semi¬ 
liquid carmine made its appearance, pouring in 
viscous rivulets over the sweating faces of both 
the contestants. 

Cardot and Childers were watching from the 
window, when the negro who was getting the 
worst pulled a large Barlow knife from his hip 
pocket and feverishly opened it. At this instant 
Childers ran out and separated the two, roughly 
shoving them off in opposite directions. From 
a distance they glared vindictively at each other 
for a moment, then trudged away. 

“Two of the best darkies we have on the place,” 
said Childers when he returned. “Never knew 
’em to fight before.” 

That night Cardot had a dream so vivid in 
detail that he remembered it perfectly the next 
morning when he awoke. Through the medium 
of the fighting negroes, he was subconsciously 
transported to African scenes. He saw a high 
bridge thrown across a chasm through which 
raced a turgid stream; at both ends of the bridge 
there were palms and heavy jungle growth. Of 
a sudden came a rush of soldiers, Germans from 
one side, British from the other, to the center 
of the bridge. Both forces were accoutred in 
uniforms for tropical wear, with white pith hel¬ 
mets. The German force vanished as abruptly as 
it had appeared; the British had prevailed and 
held the bridge. One unfortunate German, how¬ 
ever, had taken refuge in the superstructure and 
to him the force of English soldiers now turned 
their attention, demanding that he come down. 
Cowed and trembling like a treed rabbit, the man 
slid down iron timbers to the pack below. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


53 


The captive's face was turned toward him and 
transfixed with horror. “Surely,” thought the 
dreamer, “the punctilious English will be con¬ 
tent to take him prisoner and spare his life.” As 
though in answer to this, Cardot was forced to 
watch while one of the soldiers produced a 
bayonet and stabbed the German repeatedly in 
the back. The expression of the face changed 
before his eyes from one of desperate pleading 
for life to the sardonic grin of death. Then a 
limp hulk that a moment before had been a 
sentient being was thrown into the foaming cur¬ 
rent far below. 

He awoke in the throes of this nightmare, in¬ 
duced by the excitement of events of the day 
before. “Well,” he told himself sadly, “after all, 
that's just a close-up of modern warfare. Hun 
or English, they can’t seem to get the necessity 
of applying the Golden Rule—of meting out 
justice, or exercising the principles of humanity 
toward other nationals that they feel they should 
use toward their own people.” 

He related the dream to Peggy, concluding that 
after all was said and done a man was entitled 
to his own private views on warfare, and that 
there was something to be conceded to the con¬ 
scientious objector who had the courage of his 
convictions and lived up to them. That evening 
he wrote to the Chief of the Aviation Section of 
the Signal Corps for details of enlistment and 
training as a flyer. 


VII 


It was a rainy Thursday; all during the pre¬ 
ceding day the dark clouds had been mobilizing, 
first in facile squads and companies, and then 
in slow-moving regiments. The locusts that had 
been chirping contentedly shrilled vain protest 
against this menace to their comfort, but other¬ 
wise, drooping nature beckoned the welcome re¬ 
lief. In the night the wind had risen while the 
rain came in noisy torrents that beat cosily on 
the roof. 

When the gray daylight came it was still pour¬ 
ing steadily. Mr. Childers had gone out after 
breakfast, more through force of habit than any¬ 
thing else, though he also counted it a privilege 
to outfit himself in slicker and top-boots and ride 
forth with the rain beating in his face. 

Cardot, who had received notification to report 
at the training school, was assuming in advance 
the prerogatives of the soldier on leave and slept 
late. Peggy served him breakfast herself—thin 
triangles of buttered toast and coffee that was a 
steaming libation to Jupiter Pluvius. 

“Suppose I stay home today, Peggy,” he sug¬ 
gested, appreciatively, as she brought him the 
second cup. 

“Oh, fine!” she exclaimed, delighted. “Please 
do. We can finish ‘Mr. Britling’ and have time 
to talk as well. I love gloomy days.” 

“They don’t seem gloomy down here,” he 
answered. “There is so much sunshine that they 
are rarer than a day in June.” 

The testament of “Matching’s Easy” proved de- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


55 


pressing and they soon abandoned it to watch in 
silence the great tears of rain coursing down 
the oak just outside one window, or the spray 
flicked from the slender bamboo leaves at the 
other. Never had each so desired to give spon¬ 
taneous utterance to his thoughts, and never had 
either been so self-conscious. Their crowded 
hour was going to be a failure. Cardot was 
serious; had been so since he had received his 
orders. He could conceive no reason for being 
blithe and carefree, although he had been af¬ 
fecting such a manner. 

He had been longing to confide his tender senti¬ 
ments to Consuela, but now found himself hesi¬ 
tating. He wondered if it was because the War 
had made sterner stuff of him; whether it was 
that alone, for all over the country young men 
were hastening to tell those they loved the things 
they had left unsaid. The contagion of protec¬ 
tive fervor, such as men felt for their wives and 
sweethearts wherever there were imminent perils, 
had not reached him. Consuela, hidden away in 
the calm woods with her father, would be safe 
enough; the shores of the United States would 
not be invaded. But he knew at the same time 
that he could easily work himself into any kind of 
transport that he desired. It was merely a matter 
of releasing the brakes on his imagination and 
permitting it to run downhill; the matter of 
stopping it would be another thing. 

This phase of his make-up worried him. For 
Consuela he had the most unstinted admiration 
and with it a vast amount of affection; he was 
vibrant at her merest touch. When he mentally 
compared her with other women he had known, 
she held every perfection. She had responded 
to his enthusiasms and fancies and her cool, rich 


56 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


voice, always fringed with mirth, gave him a 
deep, joyous satisfaction. Yes, he concluded, it 
was love, according to all the known standards. 

He felt certain that if he and Consuela were 
married, or even engaged, the thought of her 
would be a sanctuary and a place of refuge in 
many a despondent hour. And yet he had not 
broached the subject to her. He generously 
argued with himself that he was unworthy, and 
permitted the inhibition of that thought to stand 
as an excuse for his silence. 

The rain ceased and was succeeded by a desul¬ 
tory blowing of the wind, which spasmodically 
shook the heavy drops from the oak tree. 
Through a ragged edge of cloud, with ever- 
changing tentacles, the sun shone for an instant, 
like a wan smile. Cardot walked absently to the 
window and looked out. 

“I think the rain is over for the day,” he said. 

“I’m not so sure,” replied Consuela from the 
divan. “They say that only a fool and a stranger 
will predict weather in Florida.” 

“And I suppose I am both,” said Cardot with 
an air of injury. 

“You poor dear,” she answered, with a note of 
compassionate apology that curled into his heart, 
“you know I didn’t mean that as personal.” 

There was in that tone an indefinable agency 
that seemed to open the flood-gates of his emo¬ 
tions, the plaint of desire reverberating faintly 
in the mysterious valleys of the soul. He sat 
down beside her with a new and consuming in¬ 
terest surging within him. He had not guessed 
before that she had cared for him in this way; 
it was as though a new light were turned on the 
world. She had shrunk on previous occasions 
from his affectionate advances and he had quickly 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


57 


desisted, cursing himself as an ingrate; now he 
put his arms about her and drew her unyieldingly 
to him. He was unprepared for the capitulation 
that followed. She flung her arms impulsively 
about his neck, her eyes full of tears. 

“Oh, Jules,” she cried, “are you blind? Can’t 
you see I love you?” 

“And I love you, sweetheart,” he answered 
consolingly, though disappointed at the perfunc¬ 
tory sound of his own voice. 

“No, no, you don’t!” she declared, with an 
effort to control her weeping. “It’s only a pass¬ 
ing fancy with you.” 

He denied this vehemently and kissed her tear- 
damped lips. With her head on his shoulder she 
shook convulsively with sobs, while he breathed 
the fragrance of her hair and marvelled at the 
suddenness of it all. And within him, it seemed, 
a paean of triumph was beating with hallelujahs 
and the dim clash of cymbals. 

Consuela became calmer, sat up and dried her 
eyes. “I didn’t know I was such a cry-baby,” 
she said, looking at him abashed. “It must not 
have been very pleasant to kiss me.” 

“We’ll try it all over again,” he offered. 

“Not now,” she protested and held herself 
aloof. 

“I insist,” he said, with a thrill of ownership. 
He drew her to him and kissed her less ardently. 

“And now,” he asked, with a feeling that he 
was making a step into water far beyond his 
depth, “what is to be our status? Are we to 
consider ourselves engaged?” 

“If you wish it so,” she consented, and then, in 
a more confident tone, “we’ll tell father as soon 
as he comes.” 

The next morning Jules was up early, with a 


58 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


song in his heart to match that of the mocking¬ 
bird who had been beguiling the night in the old 
oak tree and was still rehearsing his varied reper¬ 
toire in a chain of silvery notes. At one stage in 
his song the feathered Lothario distinctly approx¬ 
imated the name Consuela, repeating it several 
times and then pausing for appreciation before 
passing to another strain. Cardot lingered in his 
bedroom in pleasant expectation until this part 
of the roundelay was over, and then went below 
and sat on the porch on which the sun was just 
beginning its tour of duty. 

Here he recounted the many things for which 
he had to be thankful: above all things, the Lord 
had sent him a beautiful, high-spirited girl, one 
of the old school who retained all her feminine 
charm and was at the same time a personality. 
What had he done to deserve such an act of 
grace? 

Then, more seriously, he thought of what he 
should do in the immediate future. Should he 
dissolve all doubts by asking Peggy to marry 
him at once? He knew it would be best, but 
the fact that he had no money disturbed him. 
No doubt, he reasoned, she would accede and 
continue to live with her father until he had 
returned and was rehabilitated, but the vulgar 
aspect of a war marriage, leaving his wife depend¬ 
ent on her parent, did not appeal to him. He 
sat turning the matter over in his mind, finding 
still other objections—which proved the truth of 
Rosalind’s observation that “men are April when 
they woo; December when they wed.” At length 
he heard his beloved descending the stairs and 
with relief went within to greet her. 


VIII 


“There’s but the twinkling of a star between a 
man of peace and the man of war,” and Cardot, 
with strange suddenness, found himself at a 
ground school of military aeronautics, established 
at a western university, working with heart¬ 
breaking intensity to master the various branches 
of this science. The would-be military aviator 
must be a competent wireless operator, must 
understand the various standard airplane engines; 
must know the theory of flight, and later its prac¬ 
tice; must be able to repair his machine; must 
learn the nomenclature of all these things. Then 
there were two of the standard machine guns 
used on airplanes at the time, the Lewis and the 
Vickers, in the use of which hours of instruction 
were given daily; there was map-reading, a 
smattering of navigation and the use of airplane 
instruments. In addition to this, he must learn 
to drill, must become acquainted with the regu¬ 
lations and paper work essential to the daily life 
and conduct of a commissioned officer. 

These were all given in the form of lectures, on 
which the cadet student was expected to take 
copious notes. This amount of work was stag¬ 
gering, but as if it were not already enough, there 
were long hours of drilling and instruction in the 
school of the soldier, of infantry drill regulations. 
Finally, there were weekly examinations which 
murdered sleep the night before. 

The fledgling airmen were well quartered in a 
newly-finished women’s dormitory, which a 
whimsy of the War had converted into a soldiers’ 
59 


60 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


barracks. Large plate glass mirrors surprised 
one at the stair landing; there were cozy nooks 
meant for giggling girls clustered about bonbons; 
there were capacious wardrobes designed for 
feminine skirts and scented fineries, which were 
now filled with khaki suits and the rough clothes 
and accoutrements of the soldier. They were also 
well fed and looked after. 

“We may as well tell you,” said one of the 
instructors, “that you are regarded as the prize 
cattle of the army and are treated accordingly.” 

Cardot found his comrades-in-arms much 
younger than himself. The lesson of the War in 
Europe, of which the United States was receiv¬ 
ing the full benefit, taught that men of extreme 
youth, from eighteen to twenty-one or two, made 
the best aviators, as indeed the younger men 
made the best fighters in all branches; for it is 
the cruel irony of modern warfare that the flower 
of the manhood and the hope of the generation 
shall pay the penalty. Since a main desideratum 
in the choice of an aviator is recklessness, the 
caution of the average man even of thirty being 
fatal, the outside age limit was placed at thirty- 
five. No longer a youth, the Latin impulsiveness 
of Cardot was a saving quality. 

Many of the close friends he made were still in 
the heyday of nonage, such as Gray, callow, 
romantic and desperately in love with the girl he 
had left behind. 

The mail was the thing! It was generally dis¬ 
tributed just before the noon meal and saved by 
the men for their choicest dessert of desserts, and 
many there were also who forgot their sharpened 
appetites and overlooked the “seconds,” in eager 
reading of messages from those for whom they 
were winning their wings. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


61 


Consuela wrote daily, as she had promised, 
which was oftener than Jules could possibly 
answer. “My boy is so busy that he cannot find 
time to write,” she would complain in her letters. 
“Forgive him? Of course—how could I do other¬ 
wise? But please, dearest, let me know every¬ 
thing you are doing. Let me know of all your 
pleasures, all about your work, for I like to 
follow you in thought, even though I can’t be 
with you in reality.” 

And again: “Your letters are my only happi¬ 
ness. When I didn’t receive one yesterday, I was 
wretched. Dear, I get so lonesome for you that 
sometimes I think I must come to you. I love 
you better every day, even if Dad did tell me this 
morning (in a joke) that absence doesn’t always 
make the heart grow fonder. . . .” 

She was planning to become a nurse. She 
wanted to go to New York and then across, but 
her father needed her at home as his housekeeper. 
She would have to do some dark plotting, she 
said, in order to make her getaway. 

To Cardot these letters were stimulating and 
he missed them and was vaguely unhappy on the 
several occasions when their daily regularity was 
interrupted. But he was unconsciously under¬ 
going a change; he was being hardened mentally 
as well as physically. The stern business of pre¬ 
paring for war over the lines was commandeering 
all his resources and attention. Deadly efficiency 
must be met with efficiency of the same mettle; 
the devil must be fought with fire. He felt that 
he could let those on the outside do the flag- 
waving, sentimentalizing and Kaiser-kussing; 
discipline and intimate knowledge of his weapons 
are the qualities that go to make the soldier. 
And so in time love and his engagement to Con- 


62 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


suela became a memory as much as anything else, 
something to be held in abeyance for the time 
being and resumed when conditions should again 
permit. 

Yet he had never felt better satisfied with him¬ 
self; at last he was of some use to the world. 
Hard work and the patriotic zeal which occa¬ 
sionally flashed over him had chastened his mind. 
The issue of the War was obscured; he held no 
rancour for the enemy. The privilege of serving 
America and France was sufficient inducement 
for expending his last drop of blood. He could 
ask no greater boon. 

The airplanes from a field close by flew over 
the university and the cadets waved envious and 
admiring handkerchiefs. Their sole ambition was 
to get off the ground and into the air, and time 
dragged monotonously. Weeks were months and 
months were years, but eventually they were 
transferred to flying fields, experienced the bliss 
of first flight and in course of time were allowed 
to make solo trials. Then, day of days, they 
were presented with their commissions and 
allowed to wear the seductive silver wings over 
the right breast. 


IX 


After months of gruelling training Cardot found 
himself detached from his squadron, awaiting 
orders in New York City with a plethora of time 
on his hands. In sharp contrast to his daily grind 
at Ground School, he now had no duties what¬ 
soever, except to wait and hold himself in readi¬ 
ness. He did not know the reason; few did know 
the whys of things in those days. There had 
been a mix-up in the Aviation Section of the Sig¬ 
nal Corps, of which the present Flying Corps 
was then a branch, and the airplane program was 
delayed. 

At first he threw himself wholeheartedly into 
the maelstrom of social activities and the atten¬ 
tions which war-time New York was lavishing on 
officers passing through or stationed in the city. 
Here were the finest facilities for amusement that 
the world could offer. Nightly there were bril¬ 
liant balls at the leading hotels and clubs. At 
the Pershing Club for officers there were dances 
every night; there were free threatre and concert 
tickets, and a canteen presided over by a corps 
of society women, who found the occupation of 
serving attentive officers so pleasant that they 
were loath to return to prosaic home life. 

Cardot enjoyed the first four or five days of 
his new liberty; it was such a vivid relief from 
the discipline to which he had been accustomed 
that he had no idea such a life could ever pall 
on him. But after the first week this honeymoon 
of freedom had passed. After all, the War was 
raging and he longed to get into it, to be of real 


64 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


service; he did not care to be forgotten and left 
to fight the “Battle of Broadway.” 

The sense of continually waiting for orders left 
him singularly restless. He had more time to 
write letters and he wrote to Consuela, express¬ 
ing the ardent wish that she should come north 
but fearing that, since there was the uncertainty 
of orders, by the time she could arrive in New 
York he might perhaps be on his way somewhere 
else. Secretly, however, he did not care to attach 
himself to any one woman. He preferred variety, 
new faces and the froth of life; it seemed better 
to suit his mental attitude. But at the same time 
he put no one above Consuela in his mind. She 
was one of the points of delicious fixity in this 
whirling bedlam; she was like a waiting mother, 
to whom he would return like a tired child after 
the toys were broken and all was over. She, too, 
was a point of honor with him. It was his first 
engagement and he attached almost as much 
solemnity to it as to marriage itself; he would not 
violate his pledge of troth to her even in thought. 

A week passed, two weeks, three weeks, and 
still no orders. Had his been one of those intense 
natures that appreciate the value of time, he could 
have turned his thoughts to account. He did do 
some desultory reading, he visited the museums, 
and he conversed with other officers; always they 
seemed to be catching trains or boats, with only 
a glorious few minutes to spare in the metropolis, 
and their departure made him feel only more 
purposeless and more hopelessly marooned, 
caught and held in this swirling eddy of New 
York. 

One afternoon he casually strolled through the 
lobby of a large hotel. There was the usual 
coterie of well-dressed men and women, most of 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


65 


them wearing a look of profound ennui. It 
seemed to be the fashionable thing to assume 
this air of genteel boredom immediately upon 
entering any of the great downtown hotels. Car- 
dot’s eyes passed from well-dressed dowagers 
with carefully marcelled white hair and delicately 
tinted faces, to svelte younger women, with no 
less studied toilettes, lace hosiery and immaculate 
footwear; then to the men, for whom fashion 
prescribed a garb almost uniform of spats, pencil- 
striped trousers and cut-away coats. As he 
glanced down the row of creaseless shoes, with 
the dull staring lace holes or formal bows, Cardot 
wondered whether they, too, were not correctly 
bored. 

Several American army officers in fresh uni¬ 
forms and faultless, bespurred boots, and a British 
officer, more at ease in a costume of a less severe 
cut, formed part of the fixed wall decorations, 
but other military men came and went purpose¬ 
fully. Some of these had the joy of leave-of- 
absence irradiating their faces, while others dis¬ 
carded any air of frivolity as soon as the rotating 
door had discharged them and resumed the stern¬ 
ness they had abandoned upon leaving their 
duties. 

Cardot had been sitting there possibly half an 
hour when a lady entered and took the high- 
backed chair opposite him, at whose, brocaded 
pattern he had been fixedly staring. She thus 
became his vis-a-vis, but it was not necessarily on 
this account that he was immediately attracted. 
It was the serenity and seraphic purity of her 
face, her apparent ingenuousness, in contrast with 
the hard, glittering sophistication of the others, 
that first engaged his attention. She was some 
years older than he—possibily in her late thirties. 


66 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Thin strands of grey streaked the smooth, black 
hair, but he had always secretly placed the 
maturer charms of the middle-aged woman above 
the callow attractions of the average girl. She 
had none of the trivialities of the young woman, 
none of the dash or verve, or dare-you-to chal¬ 
lenge which takes cowardly refuge in indignation 
or flight when accepted. 

Cardot regarded her with the reverence that 
he would pay to a saint. He had a vehement 
longing to meet her and learn something of her 
previous history; he was aware of a pure and 
Platonic affection. He must meet her. He felt 
this was the part of destiny. 

“The one woman I have always longed to 
know,” he thought, availing himself of the oppor¬ 
tunity to make a mental inventory. “She is first 
and foremost 'understanding’; next, she is edu¬ 
cated, cultured, refined and married. There is 
nothing suggestive of the spinster about her. 
Fortunate man—her husband—to possess such a 
wealth of goodness!” 

He was not, however, in his fervent admiration, 
guilty of a violation of the Tenth Command¬ 
ment. She was the friend to whom he could 
confide his love for Consuela and his hopes for 
the future after the War; she would listen with 
interest, offer him advice or sympathy, laugh at 
his boyishness and ask nothing in return. With 
such a woman a devoted friendship would be pos¬ 
sible, even though she were married, without im¬ 
pinging on the conscience of either. 

To Cardot all saints must be beautiful in order 
to reflect the beatific character within; ugliness 
to him was sinful. And the lady was exquisite. 
Her head was erect, with a hint of defiance, her 
eyes dark brown, soft and velvety, the texture of 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


67 


her skin fine and smooth. She was not young, 
being of that type that never seems to have 
known youth, yet her looks did not speak of the 
past. 

She was apparently expecting a companion for 
she looked toward the passage leading to the 
street, contemplating Cardot for a fleeting, and 
for him a rapt, moment and then resumed her 
air of sweet patience, almost sadness. 

In harmony with all the qualities with which 
Cardot in his imagination endowed her, was her 
attire, consisting of a simple but beautifully 
tailored serge suit of midnight blue. Her tricorne 
velvet hat was set at just the right angle to suit 
the contour of her face. To complete a man’s 
summary, her hosiery was of sheer silk and 
encased in patent leather slippers with French 
heels—even a saint may have well-turned ankles. 

Presently her friend appeared, a large, plump 
woman, albeit with a certain gymnastic fresh¬ 
ness about her and a jolly devil-may-care atti¬ 
tude. Her light brown hair seemed to be drawn 
tightly upward and concentrated under a jaunty 
flowered toque, emphasizing large pearl earrings. 
“Undoubtedly a good fellow,” summarized Car- 
dot. “What a vivid contrast!” 

He did not speculate long; the ladies ex¬ 
changed a few words and started for the elevator 
and with a guilty sense of following, disguise the 
act as best he could, he managed to reach the 
elevator door and ascend with them. 

“I am in luck,” Cardot thrilled triumphantly 
as the car reached the top floor and discharged 
its passengers. This was the solarium where a 
reception and the dansant for officers of the Allied 
Nations was in progress. He knew that for the 
man in uniform the matter of being presented to 


68 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


any guest present was an easy matter; in fact, 
that formality was waived in many cases. But 
Cardot preferred the correct introduction; it 
would make him feel more at ease. 

And so the hostess conducted him a few 
minutes later to the palm-shaded divan where the 
two women had seated themselves. 

“Mrs. Claiborne,” addressing his saint of the 
lobby, “this is Lieutenant Cardot; Mrs. Wheaton, 
Lieutenant Cardot.” 

“I am pleased to meet you, I am sure,” said 
Cardot, bowing stiffly. The ladies bowed and 
murmured their pleasure. 

“And now,” urged his conductress, “there are 
some pretty girls over here, I should like you to 
meet.” She led him to a bevy of young things, 
banded together in a corner with the unspoken 
determination to giggle down their disappoint¬ 
ment at not having dancing partners. The after¬ 
noon was young, and while at the height of these 
affairs the ratio of women to men was always two 
to one, it was now still greater. The small talk 
was constrained and awkward, each of the 
maidens planning how she could best corral the 
winged lieutenant when the music should start. 

Later, while dancing, he noticed that Mrs. 
Claiborne was sitting alone and as soon as there 
was a pause in the music he excused himself from 
his partner and went over to her. 

“May I not have the pleasure of a dance?” he 
asked her. She smiled and shook her head and 
being easily discouraged he felt that their ac¬ 
quaintanceship was going to end at that, but she 
stopped him as he was about to bow and leave. 

“Won’t you sit and talk to me a little?” she 
asked, moving over the slightest mite. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


69 


“I would much prefer it to dancing/' he an¬ 
swered sincerely. 

“I never learned to dance/' she continued, 
“although I never disapproved, and always want¬ 
ed to learn. My father was very strict." 

“Then you, yourself, are not a Puritan?" he 
asked, eager to discover the secrets of life of 
this woman who so appealed to him. 

“No, I am not," she said, but added seriously, 
“sometimes I think it would be much better if 
I were. I have it my blood and the traditions 
of my family, but I have always felt such an 
independence of spirit that I have rebelled against 
conventions. I used to chafe, even as a girl, 
under the thought that I was being governed 
from the grave of my ancestors. But that is the 
way of the world, I suppose," she smiled, fear¬ 
ing that he might think her moody. “The dead 
command and the living obey." 

He was enchanted by the gentleness of her 
voice, with its refined modulations, and the trace 
of anxiety with which he fancied she regarded 
him. He on his part studied to improve the shin¬ 
ing hour, wondering if they would meet again, 
contemplating the boon of her friendship and 
radiant influence in his restless hours of unem¬ 
ployment. He had a great desire to be decent; 
she would help him. He pleaded his loneliness. 

“You are a funny boy," she told him, mildly 
chiding. “I can hardly conceive of an army offi¬ 
cer being lonely in New York City in these times 
when there are so many opportunities for enjoy¬ 
ment. Where are all the girls I see everywhere?" 

“I suppose I am funny," he confessed with a 
touch of wistfulness, “but I happen to be en¬ 
gaged to one of the dearest girls in the world. 
I am a little old-fashioned myself." 


70 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“But would you necessarily have to forget 
her?” she asked. 

“No, I do not think I should,” he admitted 
after reflection, “although I never make it a prac¬ 
tice to promise anything in regard to myself. I 
have found it futile, ‘for what I would, that do 
I not; but what I hate, that do 17” 

“Paul was right, wasn’t he? But I am sure 
I do not know what to suggest. Where are your 
books? They are the best companions for lonely 
hours. They have been a great joy to me!” 

He sensed the response of solitary soul to 
solitary soul. She, too, had been lonely. Could 
it be the deep solitude of one who had loved in 
vain ? As to the companionship of books, he 
answered somewhat impatiently: 

“I haven’t been able to read two lines consecu¬ 
tively. All literature seems so tame, and I am 
too restless to allow myself to become interested. 
It is the War, of course; everything is charge¬ 
able to that. We blame it for every dereliction, 
every peccadillo, even of human nature. It seems 
to me that all the forces of evil are loosed. The 
spectacle of nations which cherished the highest 
ideals now maniac with blood-lust is too much 
for my imagination. I must get into it, help to 
put an end to it, before I can be contented.” 
The crescendo of his voice betrayed his eagerness. 

“I understand,” she said soothingly, “but you 
are doing all you can. ‘They also serve who only 
stand and wait.’ ” 

“There is some consolation in that, but waiting 
gets terribly on my nerves.” 

She regarded him seriously. “I should be happy 
to do anything I can in my small way. I should 
be glad to have you call on me some evening, 
if you think that would help.” 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


71 


“Of course, you are married?” he asked, hoping 
against hope that she was not, but vibrant with 
joy at her invitation. “Every woman to whom 
I am attracted is either engaged or married.” 

“Yes, I am,” she answered, “but my husband is 
away in Oregon on a mission that will detain 
him several months. He is a supervising engineer 
on a gigantic dam under construction out there.” 

“And he wouldn’t object?” 

“Not at all,” she said frankly. “He has always 
said that he doesn’t wish me to become lone¬ 
some.” 

“In which event, I shall be happy to avail 
myself of your invitation. Will tomorrow eve¬ 
ning be too soon?” 

“No,” she said, “I shall expect you.” 

At this moment her companion returned and 
announced that they must be leaving. “I hope 
I haven’t interrupted a tete-a-tete,” she added 
archly. 

“Mrs. Claiborne and I have had a most pleas¬ 
ant conversation,” said Cardot rising. 


X 


There are a group of red brick buildings on 
Gramercy Square which still stand out as a 
stronghold of respectability in New York City. 
Their rectangular, staring windows seem to sniff 
disdainfully at the encroachments of the sky¬ 
scrapers with their easy grace and tolerance. 
Through the indomitable will of their tenants, 
who appear to have inherited the pride of their 
predecessors, or ancestors, as the case may be, 
these buildings have become old without becom¬ 
ing disreputable. They have been painted and 
repainted, and the white lines of mortar are traced 
so vividly between the bricks that one is 
reminded of the canvas street scenes of the 
theatres, an impression heightened by the lack 
of traffic and the aristocratic stillness of the 
square as compared with the roar of Broadway, 
not far off. 

In one of these houses Julia Douglass was 
> born. Her mother died soon after and her early 

training devolved on her father and his maiden 
sister, a severe woman with deep, religious con¬ 
victions. Although brought up in New York, her 
education partook of an almost nun-like exclusion 
from the actual facts of life, the reality of which 
came only faintly to her, much as the rumble of 
the city which floated in occasionally through the 
mauve velvet curtains. She was later sent to an 
exclusive school for young women, an institution 
conducted by two dignifed spinsters, no less 
severe than her aunt, who devoted themselves 
with fervor and stern rigor to the inculcating of 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


73 


ladylike qualities, giving far more attention to 
the branch of their curriculum known as “deport¬ 
ment” than they gave to any other subject. 

As the girl grew older she chafed more and 
more under the restraint of home, but she could 
never summon courage to voice her discontent. 
Her father was as human as his crust of reserve 
would permit, but he always managed to reason 
his daughter out of her girlish whimsies. Thrown 
back upon herself she was always reading 
romances, love stories, a great deal of poetry, 
occasional easy scientific subjects, and thus vicar¬ 
iously learning of the world and coloring it with 
the rosy, poetical light of her own imagination. 

When she had completed her boarding-school 
education, her father, whose business required 
that he should travel, took her with him. Thus 
she saw the United States and Canada from one 
end to the other, and much of Europe. On these 
trips she was happy and contented. Her father 
was her constant companion. Though she met 
many interesting men and women they, too, were 
usually much older than she and she conse¬ 
quently assumed a mature air rather out of keep¬ 
ing with her years. 

Having abandoned in turn an ambition, born 
of her romantic nature, first for the stage, and 
later for the Bohemian life of an artist in a 
Greenwich Village attic, she looked forward to 
marriage as the inevitable career open to her. 
She pictured it as an ideal state, a Utopian exist¬ 
ence wherein she would be perpetually happy. 

And then Frederic Claiborne came into her life. 
He was a close friend and business associate of 
her father, who admired him greatly for his 
ambitions and high moral standards. He was, in 
fact, a man to command the respect of all with 


74 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


whom he came in contact. He was a physical 
giant, tall and well-proportioned; chivalrous in his 
manner and engrossed in his work. 

The father brought him often to Gramercy 
Square, seeing in him the prospects of an ideal 
son-in-law, and eventually Claiborne asked leave 
to pay his addresses to Julia. Claiborne, though 
much older, was the epitome of manly virtues. 
His dictum was law to her; he was perfect. 

It was true he was not the languishing lover of 
whom she had read in her novels and poems. 
Sentiment had very little place in his make-up, 
but while she missed this, she was confident 
that there was some miraculous, magical power 
in marriage that would overcome any defect. He 
would become then the indulgent, tender hus¬ 
band and theirs would be an exemplary existence. 
Marriage to her was a sacrament, enshrined in 
her heart during all her girlhood days; it was 
almost wicked to think of it as being anything 
but happy. 

She was therefore little prepared for the cruel 
delusions of life by the side of a man to whom 
a business career meant everything, and mar¬ 
riage only a means to that end. He was courteous 
and cold, treating her little woman’s ways, in 
which her hunger for love manifested itself, as 
mere weakness. He was absolutely ignorant of 
feminine nature, taking for granted that as the 
wife of Frederic Claiborne, provided with all the 
comforts and luxuries of life, she must certainly 
be happy. It never occurred to him that there 
was nothing in wealth to satisfy the little un¬ 
satisfied demands of her heart. 

She did her part and more. She poured her 
love in libations, which fell only on barren soil; 
he repulsed her advances, not unkindly or un- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


75 


gently, but indulgently, as though she were a 
naughty child. Her woman’s soul was outraged, 
but she did not give up her hopes of winning him, 
of making apparent to him the bleakness to which 
he was condemning her, until she became con¬ 
vinced that she was wedded to a cold, reasoning 
machine and that every sacrifice would be in vain. 

Claiborne was ambitious to an extent that ter¬ 
rified her; his ambition swept away all obstacles 
before it. Shortly after they were married, he 
told his wife that they must not have children. 
He could not be so hampered until he had made 
further progress in his profession. This was her 
great chilling disappointment, but, as in other 
instances, she had to submit quietly to this edict, 
to his selfishness. Later, when the mothering in¬ 
stinct and all the traditions of her birth and 
training grew too strong within her to be re¬ 
pressed, she begged and pleaded with him to 
grant as a boon that which was her woman’s 
right and heritage. 

Night after night now she lay in her own room, 
tense with passion and unrequited affection, and 
the morning still found her sleepless. Thus she 
came to consider her status as a pseudo-wife, a 
concubine in his household. She wondered if, 
after all, she did not have a touch of scarlet in 
her, to be able to remain with him. But the gen¬ 
erations before her frowned her down. 

At times she hated him with a deadly hatred 
and rebellion seethed within her. She had lav¬ 
ished her affections until she thought the well 
was dry, but she found her love trickling in to 
replenish it, fed by an apparently inexhaustible 
spring of desire. 

His profession began to call him away from 
home a great deal and she came to regard these 


76 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


absences as blessed respites from the weariness 
of the conflict which raged within her. Solitude 
held a charm that it has for most tortured souls. 
Her spiritual wounds were somewhat assuaged, 
and the privacy and stillness of the apartment on 
the Drive were as a pleasant oasis to the desert 
traveler. 

And yet the Calibornes were pointed out as a 
happily married couple. Julia, on her part, was 
above gossiping about her husband, and he, too 
blinded with ambition and conceit to realize the 
extent of suffering he was causing. 

The death of her father four years after her 
marriage caused her infinite sadness. As long as 
he was living, she had a home to which she could 
turn, where she could live again her childhood 
days. She had some one, at least, to pet and 
humor her as in the past, but with his death 
this refuge was denied her. 


XI 


Calling the following afternoon at Mrs. Clai¬ 
borne’s apartment, Cardot experienced the pleas¬ 
ant sensation of a tryst as he waited for the 
elevator which would carry him to her floor. 
He was in a happy frame of mind; there were 
restraints on both sides which would make their 
friendship such as angels smile upon. He had 
just received a letter from Consuela relating the 
little happenings of her day. She was in Atlanta 
studying to become a trained nurse. “I am not 
so far from you now, dear,” she wrote. “Per¬ 
haps I may even see you before you leave, but 
that is almost too much to hope for. Don’t 
neglect or forget me, for I am always thinking 
and longing for you, though working heart- 
breakingly hard.” By way of postscript, she en¬ 
closed a sweet shrub: “It will die,” she said, “but 
it has the odor of the South.” The unadorned 
vertical handwriting, bespeaking sincerity and 
honesty of heart, brought her vividly before him; 
the memory of the rainy day was a mental 
lozenge which perpetually retained its pleasing 
flavor of romantic youthful attachment. 

As to the attraction which Mrs. Claiborne had 
for him, his ready self-justification came to his 
aid. 

“The more I see of the others,” he told him¬ 
self, “the more I will appreciate Consuela . . . 

the comparison is absurd, anyway.” 

He stood before her door with quick-beating 
heart, hearing from within the soft notes of a 
piano. The music left off at his knock and was 
77 


78 THE WALKING WOUNDED 

succeeded by a gentle swish of approaching 
skirts. 

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Cardot,” she 
greeted easily. “You found the way without any 
trouble ?” 

“Yes, indeed,” he answered. “New York City 
is the oyster that I have opened with my sword.” 

She laughed softly as she led the way to the 
library. The aviator stared at her with incredulity 
This was a different woman from the one he had 
met before; the laughter of the saints could have 
no such musical ring. Today she was deliciously 
human in pearl grey crepe-de-chine; her abundant 
hair piled loosely into a sort of psyche, with 
what appeared to be studied negligence. 

Today, too, she was arch and challenging, while 
he was determined to maintain the attitude of 
respect with which she had previously inspired 
him. She asked him about his home life, his 
ambitions, his travels. She wanted to know all 
his love affairs; she was particularly interested 
in his penchant for literature and delighted with 
his philosophical turn of mind. 

She told him of her travels, first with her 
father and then with her husband, to whom she 
always referred as “Mr. Claiborne.” 

“But a woman can never have the fun that a 
man has in traveling. A man can go anywhere, 
at any time, and with whom he pleases, 
while a woman has to trail along. I have often 
wanted to taste real independence,” she pouted. 

Cardot had to admit she was right; he had 
never seen any advantage in being a woman. 

“It isn’t written that a woman can have all 
the experiences that a man may,” he said. “That 
is, have them and keep feminine.” 

“I don’t know why she shouldn’t,” she returned 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


79 


with a little toss of her head. “Are men such 
superior beings that they should sip every pleas¬ 
ure, while women must remain household 
drudges? That era has passed.” 

“I am quite sure it has,” agreed Cardot heartily. 
“The War has shown that women can do the 
work of men; they are entering fields that have 
been closed to them for centuries, they are feel¬ 
ing the freedom of manumitted slaves, since most 
women choose to look on their former state as 
a species of slavery, but if they interpret this 
freedom as license, God help us!” 

“You are quite an orator, aren’t you?” she in¬ 
terrupted the discussion with a smile.” 

“That’s what my mother always told me,” he 
said laughing. “Isn’t it strange that today we are 
discussing these things like old friends and yes¬ 
terday, when I first saw you, I thought you as 
distant and unapproachable as a star? I don’t 
mean cold or unfriendly,” he hastened to add. 
He became confused, so she came to his assistance. 

“I suppose you put me on a pedestal, and today 
I have stepped off.” 

“Oh, no, I didn’t quite mean that,” he pro¬ 
tested, and he did not because he was still wor¬ 
shipping more ardently than ever. 

“I know you didn’t,” she said gently. “You 
are a dear boy to have such an exalted opinion 
of me, but I am really very human. Most women 
don’t care to be thought little plaster saints. 
And now,” she continued, rising, “let us see what 
we can get together for tea.” 

“That sounds interesting,” he murmured con¬ 
tentedly, as she left him alone to contemplate 
the formidable array of books in oak cases which 
lined the room. 

She returned with a tea cloth. 


80 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“Those are my husband’s books,” she answered 
in response to the sweep of his eye. “I love to 
read and sometimes I do some wading*, but I’d 
rather avoid anything too deep. I love poetry; 
I’m afraid I even read the Bible poetically.” 

“I have never read it otherwise,” he said, “but 
then I am a free-thinker or a nothing, I suppose.” 
He would have said atheist, but there always 
seemed to be some mental objection to the pro¬ 
nouncing of that word, born of early supersti¬ 
tion that something terrible might happen to him 
if he applied it to himself. 

“You know you’re not,” she chided mildly, 
adjusting the cloth with a quiet precision. “Some¬ 
how or other I formed the opinion that you were 
very devout, or that you had it in you to be so.” 

“That is an odd conclusion; I guess after all 
it is impossible to size one up from his appear¬ 
ance. But really,” he persisted, “don’t you think 
that religion has been rather a failure? After 
centuries of civilization, look where we find our¬ 
selves !” 

She had kept her eyes on him, and her voice 
was grave. She talked to him as she would to 
a little boy. 

“I know. It has been a time to try one’s faith, 
but God, in His mysterious way, is present on 
every battlefield, both over there, and here on 
those on which we fight our own battles. And 
there, as here, in the darkest hours, real help 
is in the Bible.” 

“And yet,” said Cardot, as though in a reverie, 
“there is something fine about war, especially for 
the man actively engaged in it, even if he is only 
waiting for orders. Personally I wouldn’t today 
trade places with the most affluent war- 
profiteer on earth, with his hand lusting for all 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


81 


that is not his own. War for a noble principle 
ennobles one; develops that most precious her¬ 
itage of a man—his honor. It has in this case 
furnished us the spectacle of all classes, rich and 
poor, high, low and middle caste, even criminal, 
banded together in a common cause. What a 
democracy! It is too bad religion cannot be as 
all-embracing; there have been enough sacrifices, 
cruel practices and bloodshed in its name to make 
it so, but we see it today still broken up into 
sects, with their diverse creeds, all worshipping 
the same God, or His equivalent, but still bicker¬ 
ing, quarreling, intolerant/’ 

He saw that she was not convinced. She had 
paused in her preparations and was waiting for 
him to complete his peroration. 

“My dear,” he was drawn by the compassion 
in her voice, “it is a shame that such a young 
man as yourself should be so cynical. I see I 
shall have to take you in hand. I am not one of 
those who invest the God of Love with a thirst 
for the blood of those who do not know Him as 
I do, or worship Him by another name, but 
please do not try to tell me that war, with its 
murder, pillage and destruction, is beautiful, or 
has any place in our civilization. And now,” she 
concluded more lightly, as she turned to pour 
the tea, “draw up your chair. You will have to 
make out on one lump of sugar, as we humble 
civilians do.” 

“This isn’t tea; this is nectar!” exclaimed 
Cardot appreciatively. 

The evening shadows gathered as they talked 
and the rumble of the noisy city seemed to be¬ 
come less harsh, but more insistent. 

“Will you send me home after tea, or would 
you consider an invitation to the theatre?” he 


82 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


asked hesitatingly, fearing that he was wearing 
out his welcome. 

“I should love it,” she answered with a half- 
amused smile. 


XII 


There was an epidemic of “bedroom’’ plays, 
plays glorifying the eternal triangle, ribald plays 
in which normal marriage was reductio ad ab- 
surdum. Plays depicting war were almost 
taboo; people were fed up on that subject. They 
selected finally a new production which they took 
on faith. It proved to be an exhibition of the 
skill of a veneered savage in evening clothes in 
making love to women he deemed worthy of his 
mettle, purely for the sake of the conquest, and in 
successfully breaking down their barrier of re¬ 
serve. The stage was literally strewn with his 
victims though he had selected for his consump¬ 
tion only those who were like Caesar’s wife, 
scornfully delegating the others to his less fas¬ 
tidious partner in crime. The play left a bad 
taste in Cardot’s mouth. He still carried the 
idealism of love, of the pure, holy respect and 
affection between man and woman. He felt there 
must be truth at the bottom of it, and that man 
must jealously guard his ideals of woman as the 
moat between real manhood and barbarity; he 
was convinced that, as the river can rise no 
higher than its source, so to cheapen the dignity 
of womanhood or sully the honor of the sex, was 
to lower the standards of civilization. 

They did not discuss the merits of the play as 
they joined the slow-moving throng of theatre¬ 
goers headed toward Broadway, beyond agreeing 
that they did not care for it. 

They rode home on the hurricane deck of a 
Fifth Avenue bus, and he held unnecessarily long 
83 


84 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


to the beautifully moulded arm by which he had 
assisted her to her seat. She recognized the 
innocence of it and did not give that slight signal 
of resistance which to him would have been a 
command. She, too, was in rapport with this 
mood of worshipping affection which filled his 
eyes with the vague rapture of one who discovers 
new marvels in the universe. 

“I hope you will want to come soon again,” 
she said as she left him at the elevator. 

“You must recall that I have a lecture on the 
ethics of cynicism coming to me,” he laughed. 

“Very well, sir,” she answered spiritedly. “You 
shall have it. I fear, though, you are like the 
mermaid who said she couldn’t swim, but was 
willing to be taught.” 

He laughed and made his adieux. He walked 
briskly and elastically toward town, his eyes 
sparkling. If he had been in civilian clothes he 
would have whistled, but his uniform was an 
ever-present symbol of the dignity with which he 
was taught an officer should comport himself. 
Nevertheless he was unconsciously betraying the 
physiological symptoms of a new love, something 
which he would have emphatically denied if any 
one had accused him. The human family have 
more than one way of loving, just as birds 
have different recepts or methods of landing, 
according to whether they alight in the trees, on 
the ground, or, if sea birds, on serene or turbu¬ 
lent water. We love with our senses, our hearts 
or our imaginations; one emotion may be genuine 
as the other, and often in the cross-currents of 
our beings these mysterious streams run counter, 
or run together and are merged into one. 

To Cardot Mrs. Claiborne was still the radiant 
goddess that he had enthroned in his imagina- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


85 


tion on the first day he had seen her, but her 
very humanness on this afternoon had been the 
subtle agency whereby a very human love had 
been stimulated and was now merged into the 
current of worship and deification. 

The heart takes many ways, devises many 
means, argues and metaphorically tosses many 
heads-and-tails to show its contempt for human 
judgment, in order to arrive at what it wants. 
It ends by rejecting the unfavorable tails and 
tossing on until the coins have given their con¬ 
sent, however reluctantly. And so Cardot fol¬ 
lowed his natural bent. He did not want to bring 
into his attachment a lover’s ardor, and there was 
in him a niche in which stood the ideal of sanctity 
of marriage. He would keep it inviolate. 

He reasoned that she was different from 
others. She had that wonderful God-given equil¬ 
ibrium, that balance between intellect, culture, 
and inherent religion on the one side and the 
craving for affection on the other, which would 
temper the strong wine of infatuation. He did 
not wish to fall in love; that was the antithesis 
of his desires. He had set out early in life with 
a high moral determination to conquer his appe¬ 
tites and passions, but he had many times to 
admit that it was a losing fight, and he did not 
trust himself; although he dreaded to admit it, 
yet in his inner consciousness he knew that the 
average strong attraction between man and 
woman is sexual in its origin, and though it may 
be beautiful yet it partakes of the earth. Here 
he had a glimpse of a friendship altogether holy, 
one in which the animal within him might be 
completely subjugated. He wondered. 

Two days passed to whet his impatience before 
he called Mrs. Claiborne on the telephone. She 


86 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


was busy with Red Cross work, but he might 
meet her at the Knickerbocker at four; then they 
could talk of plans for the balance of the day. 
He caught at the suggestion with eagerness. In 
the afternoon he started out from his room, 
planning to reach the hotel with ten minutes to 
spare. He had consulted his watch a hundred 
times and he found on gaining the lobby that he 
was fully half an hour ahead of his appointment. 
He sank into a corpulent leather chair and 
watched the coming and going of people, the 
meetings, handshakes and gay conversations, the 
brisk hospitality of the clerks, mentally compar¬ 
ing these brief contacts and partings to the 
touching of antennae of busy ants. 

Before he was aware of it, Mrs. Claiborne had 
entered the lobby and was standing beside one 
of the pillars, awaiting his appearance. A fleet¬ 
ing sense of guilt went over him which he would 
not have felt for a younger woman, or perhaps 
for any other woman; a feeling that he was in¬ 
ducing her to go out of the way, to stoop to the 
indignity of meeting him in a public place. And 
yet all the other appointments he had witnessed 
in this social central office that afternoon had 
appeared innocent and vivacious enough. Per¬ 
haps it was something in the forlornness of her 
attitude. At any rate, she had suggested the 
meeting-place, but they could have been more 
discreet. Evidently she was too ingenuous; he 
would discuss this with her. 

Her face brightened as she recognized him 
coming in her direction. 

“Good evening,” he said, offering his hand. 

“Good afternoon,” she corrected, smiling. 

“Of course, it’s afternoon,” he admitted. “We 
Southerners call it ‘evening’ after dinner-time; 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


87 


probably because we don’t have the long twilights 
you have up here.” 

“Is that the reason?” she asked. 

“It must be. But you and I have a whole little 
eternity here before dark; where shall we spend 
it?” 

“Wherever you wish,” she said, regarding him 
affectionately. “You are ‘the stranger within the 
gates.’ ” 

“Couldn’t we take a stroll through the woods, 
somewhere away from all this crowd and hubbub? 
Let’s go to the wilderness, to Bronx Park! I’m 
tired of the gritty paving stones.” 

“Capital! Shall we stop by at the apartment 
for a book?” 

“Anything you like, my dear.” He had prom¬ 
ised himself to be meticulously careful not to use 
any endearments, but this one slipped out in his 
delight at her enthusiasm. She did not appear to 
notice it, but he silently railed at the sentry of 
his tongue for allowing it to pass. 

Outside, he called a taxi and they spun through 
the crowded streets and into Riverside. Close at 
hand a file of grim, battle-grey ships of war 
sunned themselves placidly in the Hudson. 

“Think how peaceful they are in this snug 
harbor! And tonight they may be ploughing the 
sea in a gale; lights out, every man alert and 
keyed to the snapping point with apprehension 
of danger!” He could not view these indicia of 
the titanic struggle without a feeling of sadness 
over his inutility. He consoled himself: some of 
these days soon he would be bucking, like a 
canoe in a seaway, the disturbed atmosphere over 
the battlefields. Soon enough, perhaps; the 
papers spoke much more hopefully of the air 
program. 


88 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“You won’t be happy until you are in it, will 
you?” she asked, reading his thoughts. “It must 
be thrilling to fly,” she added with girlish fervor. 

“It is 'thrilling.’ The aviator is the playboy of 
the War, but it is dangerous and an essential 
branch—the 'eyes of the army/ you know,” he 
said impressively. “I hope you will believe me 
when I tell you that I didn’t take it up as a 
sport. It was the arm of the service in which I 
thought I could be best used. And here I am 
‘rusting unburnished.’ You know those lines of 
Tennyson’s 'Ulysses’: 

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! 

As tho’ to breathe were life! Life 
Piled on life 

Were all too little, and of one to me 

Little remains. . . . 

“Don’t you often feel that way? Aren’t you ever 
overpowered with the thought of the shortness of 
life, and how little time we have to accomplish 
anything on this planet?” 

“I have felt that way often,” she replied, “but 
more often time has dragged immeasurably on 
my hands. I have promised and promised myself 
to do something worthwhile, but the canker has 
been at my heart. I have worked without hope. 

. . . But we are not to make complaint the 

burden of our conversation today, are we? Today 
is a holiday and 'God’s in His Heaven.’ ” 

They had reached her apartment and she 
stepped down lightly without his help. He 
watched her supple stride up the walk, speculat¬ 
ing on the meaning of her words. Of course, it 
must be her husband; they were unhappy together 
and she had too much pride to blame him or 
unfold her secret misery. Her husband, he 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


89 


felt, must be a monster to mistreat such a woman, 
or fail to appreciate her. 

She called back from the doorway: “Dismiss 
the taxi; we will walk over and take the subway.” 
For this suggestion he was grateful. It showed 
a consideration unknown to the average girl, who, 
it had been his experience, was avid in her eager¬ 
ness to have money spent on her, whether it pur¬ 
chased anything or not. 

At the park they inspected the Zoo with the 
interest of children, going from cage to cage, 
commenting on the curse of restlessness in the 
felines, pacing the floor of their prisons with 
unrelenting vigilance, seeking a means of escape. 
The other animals accepted their captivity more 
philosophically, some to the point of appearing 
absolutely contented with their lot. To be born 
in a zoo was, to use a figure from human life, to 
be born with a silver spoon in the mouth, but 
the felines did not appreciate this advantage. 

“And how much worse off they would be if 
they did escape,” said Mrs. Claiborne, “with the 
whole populace raising a hue and cry until they 
were killed or put back in their cages.” 

“True,” said Cardot, and then upon reflection, 
“with the exception of the house cat. The do¬ 
mestic tabby is just as wild as any of these. Her 
domestication is absolutely superficial. You can 
trust a dog or horse and know just what its 
reactions will be to kindness or harsh treatment, 
but the cat accepts civilization on her own terms.” 

“Why do you say ‘her’?” demanded Mrs. Clai¬ 
borne defensively, “there are male cats, too.” 

He laughed. “I’m not the only one who puts 
the cat in the feminine gender. I only know it 
is a mystery; one of those which Solomon should 
have included in his list that he ‘knew not of/ ” 


90 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Arm in arm they strolled; past camels, sug¬ 
gesting volumes of Arabian Nights in the very 
grace of their heads; elephants, rocking to and 
fro in a sort of antediluvian rite; and in enclosures 
of greenery, deer, those romantic poems in flesh. 

They finally found a secluded spot beside a 
garrulous brook and sat down with the inten¬ 
tion of reading, but the book remained unopened. 
Instead they talked, touching on random subjects 
both light and grave. She listened with interest 
to his discourse on matters scientific or pertain¬ 
ing to the world upheaval, which, with the aid of 
a retentive memory, he had tagged and pigeon¬ 
holed in his brain. Knowing his relief in unbur¬ 
dening his thoughts, she asked questions which 
stimulated him to continue until the subject was 
exhausted. 

Then, not wishing to monopolize the time with 
his own interests, he asked her questions about 
herself, and succeeded in arousing a charming 
enthusiasm in which she recalled incidents in her 
girlhood days. The musical inflections of her 
voice, her faultless diction, delighted him. 

Her animation ceased when she came to speak 
of her married life, and though she referred to 
her husband only in the most respectful and dig¬ 
nified manner, giving no verbal suggestion of 
unhappiness, Cardot’s ready ear detected a 
jangling note. At first, he could not be sure of 
this, thinking he had perhaps run across an 
example of that refinement of marriage in which 
the literature he had read abounded, wherein 
husband and wife treat each other courteously 
and considerately, but hold one another at arm’s 
length, regarding too warm affection as bourgeois. 
With the frank curiosity of the single man for the 
riddle of conjugal relationship, he questioned her 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


91 


adroitly until there was no further doubt in his 
mind of her discontent. In quick and sincere 
sympathy he reached out and took her soft, white 
hand in his, caressed it and lifted it lightly to 
his lips. 

Then, as though he had taken too great a 
liberty, he announced briskly that they must be 
starting back. He helped her to her feet, and 
in the lengthening shadows they walked leisurely 
toward the city. He did not make the effort to 
maintain conversation, feeling that with this rare 
companion silence could be a communion. 

It was late at night before he left her. He 
had kissed her good-night with a chaste, sweet¬ 
heart kiss and it was not until after he had 
reached the street that the realization came 
violently upon him that this friendship which he 
had so devoutly promised would remain such, 
had developed into an infatuation. His first in¬ 
stinct was one of alarm, but soon he began to 
glory in it. Could there be any harm in pure 
love of man for woman, even though she were 
married? To admit that there could be evil in 
it seemed a sacrilege, a desecration of the shrine 
from which this ethereal affection emanated. 


XIII 


Cardot could not remember ever having been 
in such a state before. His attachment, his blind 
idolatry of Mrs. Claiborne was an obsession, 
almost an illness. Poor Consuela belonged as 
much to the past as crinoline and hoop-skirts; 
she was all but forgotten. His feverish anxiety 
for the long-delayed orders was absolutely 
allayed. When he remembered his meals he ate 
only mechanically and without appetite. His 
moral sense, stern Puritan at times, was ser¬ 
enely sleeping. When he was not with her, he 
was drifting in a sort of listlessness, forgetful 
of everything except that he was in the throes 
of a violent, reciprocated love. 

He was charmed with the intriguing aspect of 
the affair. His duty to the absent husband, when 
taken before the bar of his conscience, was easily 
dismissed with a unanimous per curiam decision. 
Claiborne had been cruel to her, he was not 
deserving of consideration. Had Cardot known 
him or broken bread in his house, his high sense 
of honor would have stiffened his willpower, but 
now he was carried unresistingly by the strong 
wind of his affections. He drew additional com¬ 
fort from the confidence he had in her nobility 
and the inflexible strength of virtue which he felt 
irradiating her character. He looked down as 
though from heights on the petty, sordid loves 
of others and felt compassion for them. His was 
a different, more exalted emotion. 

He saw her almost daily now. Their com¬ 
panionship lasted generally from the afternoon 
92 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


93 


hours until late at night. The discretion of an 
early parting hour never seemed to be present 
in the mind of either. At first they sought the 
solitude of Bronx Park, returning to the scene of 
their first pleasant afternoon there, but it was 
not long before they began to linger longer in 
the seclusion of her apartment, in which he had 
begun to take almost a proprietary interest. 

At the beginning he feared that tongues might 
be set wagging. He would not for worlds have 
scandal breathed against her. He fancied with 
indignation that the elevator man had given him 
a knowing look, as though he were in on an 
amorous secret. But she was apparently indif¬ 
ferent. He admired this carelessness as a part 
of her purity, her unsophistication. For his own 
peace of mind he broached the subject to her 
one day. 

“What will people say?” he asked, using the 
old formula. “What will they think of my visit¬ 
ing you every day?” 

“Nothing at all,” she replied blandly. “People 
all over the city are entertaining soldiers in their 
homes; why should they think anything of it?” 

“But not always under the same conditions, 
and not always the same soldier,” he protested 
mildly. “However, you know best. I only hope 
and pray that no harm can come of our friend¬ 
ship.” 

“Of course, it cannot,” she reassured him af¬ 
fectionately. “We will not let it.” 

He kissed her and they seated themselves on a 
divan in the library. She drew closer to him and 
opened the novel she had been reading aloud. He 
put his arms about her shoulders; kisses and 
affectionate embraces were now taken as a mat¬ 
ter of course. 


94 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


She looked up into his eyes smilingly and said: 
“If you are quite comfortable, we will proceed.” 

But a vague disquietude was growing within 
him as his visit continued. He was becoming the 
protector and she, he began to fear, was only 
waiting for him to adventure further upon the 
troubled seas of an illicit affair. His infatuation, 
like other states of high mental expitement, had 
reached its crisis and was now unconsciously 
abating and his conscience began to rear itself 
like the mountain-peak of Ararat above the flood. 
He had not set out to conquer, but he had un¬ 
wittingly tempted a lonely heart; the tide of her 
being was setting in his direction. He was dis¬ 
concerted and more deeply chagrined than he 
cared to admit to himself. Flight, precipitate 
flight, urged his better self, but he answered that 
it would be unchivalrous; he would taper off 
the affair. Perhaps he might persuade her to 
see how much the influence of pure friendship 
had meant to him, and they would continue on 
the basis he had first conceived. 

The next evening he called again, determined 
to clarify the atmosphere. 

“Dear,” he began, scrupulously avoiding a 
term too endearing, “I am afraid, afraid for you. 
Something may happen. We must not risk it.” 

She remained silent and looked at him with a 
troubled air, a tacit admission that she had 
weighed the consequences. He seated himself 
beside her. 

“What shall we do about it?” she asked finally. 

“We must see less of each other.” 

Her arms were about his neck in a sudden, 
passionate embrace. “No, no, lover, not that. 
Surely you can’t mean that you don’t care to 
me again.” 


see 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


95 


He was startled by her fervor. She was ac¬ 
cepting him as her “lover”; there was something 
shameless in the use of that word, a meaning to 
it that he did not care to have applied to himself. 
Why, he asked himself bitterly, had he ever made 
the mistake of treating a woman still in her prime 
as an ideal or a saint? Apparently she was sub¬ 
ject to the same weaknesses, the same struggles, 
the same temptations. She was of the same 
amorous nature . . . could it be possible? 

He stood in awe of the depth of her affection for 
him, as though an abyss had opened at his feet. 

“Please, dearest,” he pleaded, “not ‘lover,’ but 
just ‘friend.’ Can’t we remain friends?” 

“And you will not come again?” piteously. 

“I think it is for the best,” was his dogged 
answer. 

“Jules,” she said looking steadily into his eyes, 
“don’t you realize that I worship you blindly? 
that day and night I think of nothing but of you 
and your visits? that you are present in my very 
dreams? Sweetheart, surely you won’t deny me 
this happiness, this privilege of loving you. I 
have been deprived of love for so long.” 

There was a tug at his own heart, a return of 
his yearning. This exquisite, soft woman, whom 
he had adored and sanctified, was at his feet— 
his to command, body and soul. But the better 
man was in the saddle and he was determined 
to see it through. 

“Your husband!” he protested. “Is it fair to 
him ?” 

She answered this with a rage that startled 
him. 

“Yes! men expect so much of their wives. They 
have preached and sung and prated of the loyalty 
and sacredness of wifehood until they have sur- 


96 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


rounded themselves with a smug cloak of decep¬ 
tion. They even forget that a wife is a human 
being, but seem to think that with the mumbling 
of a few words a woman is miraculously trans¬ 
formed into a being that is no longer subject to 
the laws of nature. They think that whatever 
they may do, the woman will still remain a blind 
worshipper, a priestess in the temple of mar¬ 
riage.” 

“Nevertheless, he is still your husband,” Car- 
dot insisted. 

“Yes,” she cried, “that is the dull tragedy of 
the whole thing. A divorce would ruin him. I 
cannot do it! And so I am chained to a man 
whom I do not love any longer; one who never 
knew the meaning of love except when applied to 
himself and his work, his own selfish motives. 
Jules, dear, such relations are wicked, even though 
the sanction, and approval, and laws of the world 
are stamped all over them. There is a thou¬ 
sand times more virtue in our love!” She ap¬ 
peared mortified at her own vehemence, and con¬ 
cluded more calmly: “But what can a clean young 
man like yourself know about these things?” 

“But I may not be the 'clean young man’ you 
think I am,” Cardot warned. “I am human like 
the rest. I only want to save you from yourself, 
and from me. We must respect the convention¬ 
alities, even if they are only man-made. After 
all, they are the law . . .” 

“Please don’t preach, darling. I know every¬ 
thing you are going to say. We will be friends, 
nothing more. Does that content you?” 
Womanlike, she was not going to take a decision. 
She would have the last say in the matter. 

“That will be best,” he answered, rising, “and 
now I must be going.” 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


97 


“Oh, Jules,” she said tensely, “you cannot mean 
that you will not see me again; that you do not 
want to?” 

“I do want to,” he assured her tenderly, “but 
I still think it best not to.” 

“No, no; I cannot give you up now, Jules. 
Promise you will come again.” 

“Very well, I will,” he soothed, and kissed her 
good-bye. 


XIV 


He reached the street and the cool air in a 
turmoil of mental self-abuse. He was a fool and 
a cad. Not content with retaining the rare friend¬ 
ship of this sensitive woman he had to make love 
to her and allow her to fall in love with him, 
thus fatally lowering her in his own eyes. His 
love had its origin in his illusion that she was a 
super-mundane creature, and he had surprised a 
very material love for him. He was perplexed, 
wavering between disappointment at the dissipa¬ 
tion of his ideal, and the new vista of delight that 
was opening to his senses. He must cry retro 
me Satana to his carnal desires, banish them 
from his mind, suppress them, preserve the even 
flame of the almost spiritual friendship he had 
first imagined. Yes, he told himself, with bitter 
irony, that would be possible if she never crossed 
his path again. Henceforth he must worship at 
a distance. 

When he had reached his room he had sobered. 
After all, it was just an experience in an era of 
vivid experiences. He would write her a letter of 
farewell and that would be the end of the whole 
affair. 

The following day an official envelope was 
handed him. He tore it open with exultation, 
feeling that there was augury in its coming at 
this psychological time; that it was a sort of life- 
preserver thrown out to him. 

The envelope contained an official order, 
couched in succinct military terms, to report to 
the commandant of the flying field at Mineola 
for further pursuit training. 

98 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


99 


“This is only the prelude,” he thought. “I 
presume we shall soon be going over.” 

He was the mercurial Cardot bubbling over 
with enthusiasm. Again he was the warrior who 
saves his thoughts of love for his lighter hours. 
He sat down and wrote Mrs. Claiborne, employ¬ 
ing the tenderest phrases of farewell he could 
summon. He could not disabuse his mind, in 
thus writing her, of a certain woodshed hypocrisy, 
employed by the castigating parent toward his 
erring son when he says, “This is going to hurt 
me worse than it does you.” It was great to be 
decent! He also wrote Consuela, who had been 
complaining of neglect, using the Latin shrug of 
“c’est la guerre,” the blanket excuse for all 
the sins of omission at the time. From thence¬ 
forth on he promised to write more frequently. 
To himself he promised to give her first place in 
his thoughts, and on the impulse of the moment 
he went out and bought a great box of roses, the 
most expensive he could find, which he dis¬ 
patched, together with the letter, with a sort of 
uxorious comfort. After all, Peggy was his soul’s 
anchor to windward. 

Two weeks of hard work, a smashed plane, 
a reprimand from a superior officer, and he 
was glad to return to the city for a week-end. 
He had received a piteous note from Mrs. Clai¬ 
borne, but he steadfastly resolved not to see her 
again. So strong was his revulsion that he would 
probably have stuck to his guns had not fate 
intervened. 

All reports to the contrary, New York City is 
small. In the little town in which he was born 
he used to think of the great metropolis as a 
gourmand that swallowed up those who came 



100 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


within reach of its capacious maw; that here, 
outside the microcosm in which one lived, the 
individual was lost and what one did and what 
one said outside the small circle of his acquaint¬ 
ance did not return after many, or few days, as 
it did in the towns. But one has to come on 
Broadway occasionally, and Broadway has been 
said to be the Main Street of Manhattan. It is 
likewise the continuation of the Main Streets of 
all the world. 

His two weeks' absence had added zest to this 
interesting thoroughfare, now so filled with the 
khaki and blue of the national forces, spiced with 
exotic, multi-colored uniforms of the allies. Be¬ 
sides, did he not wear on his breast the coveted 
embroidered wings? What heartaches that em¬ 
blem must have caused! 

It was late afternoon, and he had planned to 
spend the evening at the Pershing Club in com¬ 
pany with Gray and Cavanaugh of his squadron, 
two of the choice spirits of cadet days, with 
whom he had had a joyful reunion at Mineola. 

He had gone to his room in the Knickerbocker 
Hotel and returned to the lobby, reminiscent of 
the second meeting with Mrs. Claiborne, to de¬ 
liver the key to the clerk. As he turned from 
the desk a lady bowed to him and he recognized 
Mrs. Wheaton. 

“Good evening, lieutenant," she said, coming 
up. “I am glad to see you back again. You 
haven’t seen Mrs. Claiborne yet, have you?" she 
asked suggestively. 

“No, I haven’t," he replied with stolid evasive¬ 
ness. 

“I am waiting here for her now." Cardot’s 
heart began to palpitate wildly. There seemed to 
be no escape; it was destiny. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


101 


“Lieutenant Cardot,” she continued, lowering 
her voice to the pink and white tones which 
women employ in speaking of the secret joys or 
sorrows of the sisterhood, “you should consider 
yourself the proudest man in New York City to 
have won the love of such a woman.” 

“I am proud.” 

Why couldn’t he run? This woman inspired 
him with disgust, as a sort of refined procuress. 
And Mrs. Claiborne, instead of burying her love 
deep in her heart, had confessed it; had sought 
and received consolation and encouragement. 
“Well,” he thought, “woe to the conquered!” 
Two weeks of soldiering had wrought a change 
in his mental attitude; or rather it came as a 
species of recidivism as a natural result of seeing 
his idol shattered. He was of the earth now. 

But when Mrs. Claiborne appeared he both ad¬ 
mired and pitied, and with these emotions came 
a thrill of ownership. He saw her beautiful and 
womanly, and, he fancied, a trifle paler than 
usual. She was not given to demonstration and 
he appreciated deeply the genuineness of her 
pleasure, which her features could not conceal, 
on meeting him thus unexpectedly. 

“Oh, Jules,” she cried impulsively, unmindful 
of the crowded lobby, “I thought I should never 
see you again; I had given you up for dead.” 

“I am very much alive, though,” he protested. 
“I found a little work a very good tonic.” 

“It seems to have agreed with you,” she said, 
surveying him fondly, “you are disgracefully 
handsome.” 

“Thank you,” he answered blushing, and then 
with chivalrous afterthought, “would you accept 
a tardy compliment?” 


102 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“Women always like to hear nice things about 
themselves, whether they believe them or not.” 

“I’ll have to tell you later,” he said abashed. 
“And now, where do we go from here?” 

“To my humble rooms for tea,” answered Mrs. 
Wheaton. 

Outside he took the arms of both women, hold¬ 
ing his inamorata closely to him. 

“Out with that compliment,” said the brisk 
Mrs. Wheaton. “Is she sweet, good, dear, kind, 
loving, or what?” 

“I was thinking of one that rolls them all 
together, a shotgun compliment that the Spanish 
use. She is simpatica.” 

Mrs. Claiborne thanked him with an affec¬ 
tionate glance of the eyes. They walked on up 
Broadway, stopping every now and then to 
examine the window displays; they made jokes 
about the things and people they saw, about the 
bell-bottomed trousers and the jaunty pancake hat 
of the omnipresent sailors, a uniform which 
caused the women to refer to them in the dim¬ 
inutive as “Jacky-boys.” 

“The ‘gob’ and his girl!” said Cardot, referring 
to a ‘clashing’ of blue and pink surveying, arm- 
in-arm, the glories of a window of marked-down 
dresses. “First thing you know he’ll be spend¬ 
ing a month’s salary on one of those creations, 
and then he can go to sea happy.” 

And so, laughing, making light-hearted com¬ 
ments, they were, altogether, three very normal 
human beings. Over the teacups he told them 
tales and scandals of the camp, laughable inci¬ 
dents which had occurred during the week— 
escapades worthy of schoolboys. 

“And just to think,” he rhapsodized, “soon we 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 103 


shall be sailing for France. Just when is a deep, 
dark secret, but I am sure it will be soon.” 

This night he was a page from mythology, 
Daedalus who boasted, /‘Minos may control the 
land, but I will dominate the air.” 

“Yesterday,” he continued, full of his subject, 
“I made a flight over the harbor. The ships were 
the merest little models, the biggest buildings 
were dwarfed into toys and the water was as 
pure and vari-colored as the Bay of Naples. 
Everything looks so clean and quiet and peace¬ 
ful when you are in the air.” 

“You must take us up with you some of these 
days,” said Mrs. Wheaton. 

Cardot became uncomfortable as the hour for 
departure drew near. He must, of course, see 
Mrs. Claiborne home, but he resolved that he 
would not tarry long at her door. She sug¬ 
gested that they walk. In some restraint they 
talked of irrelevant matters, until finally she said 
in a low voice: 

“Do you realize, dear, that you have been cruel 
to me?” 

“That is a good sample of feminine logic, I 
presume,” he replied constrainedly. “You know 
that whatever I have done has been for our 
mutual good. Surely you must recognize that.” 

“No,” she persisted, “I cannot see it that way. 
You are strong; you have high ideals. Is it a 
sin to be happy, to gain some little sweetness 
from life?” 

“And if something should happen, you would 
pay dearly for it.” 

She reflected a moment and threw her head 
back with an instinct of womanly pride. 

“Nothing could happen,” she answered. “I am 
too sure of myself.” 


104 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


He was half convinced. “The violation of the 
principle of our friendship would grieve me; with 
that gone I should feel that I were morally bank¬ 
rupt. Yet I have changed,” he continued, still 
smiling, but with some harshness, “even since 
you last saw me. The business of the War is to 
kill and I am steeling my heart against the day 
when I shall have to cope with killers. I am 
pruning away all finer sensibilities. You see in 
me today the hardened trooper.” 

They had reached her house and paused out¬ 
side. His last speech had caused a mental per¬ 
turbation that she made no effort to conceal. 

“Oh, Jules!” she cried, “please do not be so 
hard. I cannot bear to think of you this way.” 

“One is justified in being so in these days. We 
must not go on seeing each other, dear.” 

“But I am so distressed about your bitter atti¬ 
tude,” she said anxiously. “Surely you will call 
again and let me help you overcome it.” 

He looked at her indulgently for a moment. 
“Perhaps,” he half promised, and after bidding 
her good-night, left her abruptly. He walked 
to his hotel with long, nervous strides. Ashamed 
of having talked so roughly to her who cared so 
tenderly for him, he felt that he was unworthy 
of the love and friendship of such a woman. He 
called himself a brute, devoid, as he had told her, 
of any of the finer sensibilities. But again he was 
glad that he had thwarted the impulse within 
him. If he had not forfeited himself with this 
harshness of manner there would have been a 
debacle. 

The following morning, a gentle, sunshiny Sun¬ 
day, he rose in time to join the Fifth Avenue 
church procession. All during the night there had 
been a constant struggle of the flesh against the 
spirit, and he could not at this hour say which 
had dominated. Yes, he could, but he was 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


105 


ashamed to admit it. He must learn to hate her, 
to despise the very good and beautiful in her 
nature which had first attracted him, in order to 
hold in leash the wild passions which leaped 
within him, demons which had thrived on the 
insidious poison of recurrent thought. 

Thus he walked on, oscillating mentally be¬ 
tween the blandishments of sin and the out¬ 
stretched, appealing arms of the church, a figure 
aroused by this well-clad, orderly promenade of 
men and women, the harmonious chime of bells 
and the inviting, hospitable sunshine. 

Though not in a devout mood he stepped into a 
small church on the Avenue, feeling much as a 
man who buys a cure-all, thinking: “I will try 
a bottle of your moral panacea; it can’t help me, 
but at any rate it can’t harm me.” He regarded 
with inward disdain the welcoming smile of the 
ushers and seated himself with a cluster of khaki- 
clad lads, where he considered he would be less 
conspicuous. 

The minister was a dapper little man, of un¬ 
assuming personality, but his voice was clear and 
melodious. He read first from “Ecclesiastes”: 

To everything there is a season, and a time to every 
purpose under the Heaven: a time to be born, and a time 
to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which 
is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to 

break down and a time to build up.a time to love 

and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. 

From this he dwelt on the warfare of the spirit 
against the desires of the flesh: 

Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner 
destroyeth much good. 

“You men in khaki,” he said, suddenly apos¬ 
trophizing the little group, “subdue also the 
enemy within you! Assail him with every known 



106 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


weapon; grant him no quarter, for he cometh 
to destroy you. He cannot be temporized with. 
There can be no truce with him, for his promise 
is a scrap of paper. And when you have him in 
your power, that is the time to kill!” 

After the services Cardot walked slowly back 
toward his hotel, going over in his mind the 
experience of the morning and finding his soul 
singularly refreshed by it. In his room he picked 
up the Gideon Bible on his dresser and read all 
the chapters of the preacher’s text, each word of 
which was a burning message. 

It was five in the afternoon when he was 
awakened by the telephone in his room. It was 
Mrs. Claiborne. “I was so concerned about you 
last night—your terrible mood! Can’t I see you 
for just a moment?” 

“I will be over presently,” he answered in a 
voice husky with passion. 

Then ensued a characteristic dialogue between 
his better and worse selves: “Don’t do it,” be¬ 
sought the better, but he continued dressing. 
“I have warned her,” his passions answered 
sternly. “I gave her frank warning.” “Fool!” 
interrupted conscience, becoming vituperative 
where soft words failed. “Stop! you are rushing 
to your doom. . . . What will be the con¬ 

sequences of today’s folly? Death to all that is 
good in both of you.” 

But by this time his footsteps were leading 
him to the street. Soon he would be in the sub¬ 
way which would rush him pitilessly, like the 
tempest within him, into sin. In vain he conjured 
before him the morning’s sermon, the pleadings 
of his conscience, the spirit of sustaining friend¬ 
ship. In vain he recalled the wonderful prose 
poem he had read that morning: 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


107 


Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, 
while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, 
when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. While 
the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not 
darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain. 

On the subway he cursed this nausea of spine¬ 
lessness. 

His passion was fortified with the subtle argu¬ 
ments of the libertine against the appeal of con¬ 
science. The gilded sin of the modern novel and 
scenario, license cloaked with outward decency 
and smugly paraded before the eyes of the world, 
books and plays wherein the marital relation was 
scoffed at and made light of, all came before him 
in a flood of scarlet. And with this there was 
the sardonic background of the War, hooting at 
the old order, promising free love and saying to 
the soldier, “Above all things, eat, drink and be 
merry, for tomorrow you may die.” There was 
bitter iconoclasm urged by the discovery that 
she whom he had worshipped as a goddess was 
only flesh and blood. 

On that day there transpired that which he 
would a moment later have given his right arm, 
nay, his very life, to have undone. He virtually 
reeled from the door. The bravado, the elan, of 
the soldier was gone. He had insulted his uni¬ 
form, dragged his emblem of a militant purity 
into the mire. 

Poor aviator! Poor Icarus who flew too close 
to the sun! 

On his way to the hotel a saturnine proverb, 
long forgotten, came to his mind: “When Platonic 
affection and good intentions get together, the 
devil takes two hours’ rest.” 


XV 


He did not realize the deep poignancy of his 
grief until the following morning. He had fallen 
asleep with the sleep which tires rather than 
rests the body, but toward daybreak, thoroughly 
exhausted, he slept soundly, dreaming with exul¬ 
tant joy that he had met the temptation and 
overcome it. In the morning he awoke refreshed, 
still thrilling with this chaste delusion, but it re¬ 
quired only a few seconds’ recollection to dissipate 
it. Sleep, like strong wine, had become a mocker. 
He arose mechanically, suffering in the open day 
the abasement of the damned. He tried to meas¬ 
ure it: had his entire family been destroyed in 
one great disaster, he could not suffer such tor¬ 
ment as he was now undergoing. His honor 
was destroyed; it could never be replaced, never 
patched up. 

As he was dressing the telephone rang. 

“Good morning, sir,” said the clerk’s voice. “A 
lady to see you in the parlor.” 

“Very well, I’ll be right down,” he answered 
apathetically. 

He concluded his morning preparations mechan¬ 
ically, never even wondering who his visitor 
might be. 

As he stepped from the elevator to the floor 
of the parlor, a figure in blue, like a hot flame, 
ran across the room and into his arms which he 
had opened to receive her. It was Consuela in 
the service uniform of a nurse! 

“Oh, Jules, I am so happy,” she cried, tears 
shining in her eyes. “Oh, isn’t it all too won- 
108 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


109 


derful!” and she laughed by way of relief, a rip¬ 
pling, whole-hearted peal of silver laughter, bred 
of moonlight nights and the orange blossoms of 
the South. It was so infectious that he felt 
momentarily cleansed, and he embraced her to 
his heart, close, close and raised his eyes in 
silent prayer. 

“Let us sit on the divan. Just think of the 
thousand, thousand things we have to talk about, 
and I am leaving today/’ 

“No!” he ejaculated. 

“Yes, I am. Bound for France.” They had 
seated themselves. 

“And you’re going to leave me over here?” he 
asked, wretchedly. 

“Don’t you want me to go?” she exclaimed, 
surprised. “What is the matter with you, dear?” 
She looked at him concernedly. 

“Oh, nothing, sweetheart,” he replied with an 
attempt at a smile. “I’m just a little down¬ 
hearted.” 

“Now, I like that,” she said naively. “Your 
sweetheart comes unexpectedly and you are 
downhearted. And, dearest—” she lowered her 
voice. 

“What, Peggy?” 

He knew the ordeal of denying her a kiss would 
be but the prelude to a confession. But how 
could he bring himself to kiss the innocent lips 
pouting before him? It would be blasphemy 
added to blasphemy; contagion was in his very 
touch. 

“There is not a soul in the parlor,” she whis¬ 
pered shyly. 

“Yes, I know. It is too early in the morn¬ 
ing,” evasively and, to change the subject, “have 
you had your breakfast yet?” 


110 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“No, indeed! Today we are to have every meal 
together. Do you think I would miss that pleas¬ 
ure? and I’m frightfully hungry, too. We were 
twenty-four hours late getting in.” 

“But why didn’t you let me know?” he de¬ 
manded in fresh anguish. “Why didn’t you wire 
me?” 

“I did, Jules, and when we arrived last night, 
the first thing I did was to ’phone your camp, 
and they told me you were in town at the Knick¬ 
erbocker. I was dreadfully disappointed when 
you didn’t meet the train, so I decided to sur¬ 
prise you the first thing this morning.” 

There was a pause. 

“And, dear,” impulsively, “I have the most 
wonderful plan! I’ll unfold it during the day.” 

“Fine!” he said, responding to her enthusiasm 
with a pretense of heartiness. “Does it concern 
me, too?” 

“Somewhat,” she said, looking cautiously 
around the room, slumbering in its heavy, vacant 
furnishings. “But first, haven’t you forgotten 
something? You haven’t kissed me yet.” 

For answer he shook his head slowly and sadly 
in negation, but held her more closely in his arms. 
Here was life, rosy, fluent life, offered and he had 
chosen the dull stagnancy of death. 

“Jules,” she clutched him feverishly, fear in her 
eyes, “you are acting so strangely. Tell me; 
what is the matter? Something terrible must have 
happened.” 

He answered with the suppressed sob of the 
man who seeks to hide his grief: 

“Dearest, I am so utterly, utterly miserable. 
I am so unworthy of you, so contemptible . . 

Instantly she was maternal, comforting him, 
kissing his cheek, drying the slow, painful tears. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


111 


He pushed her gently from him. “Darling,” he 
hesitated, seeking words in which to tell her. “I’ll 
have to give you the truth, the naked, unvarnished 
truth, much as it will hurt you. I am all that is 
base, too low to deserve even your least thought.” 

She looked at him incredulously. “What do 
you mean, Jules?” 

“You will have to give me up, Peggy; forget 
me, obliterate me from your memory.” 

“What is it?” she persisted, uncomprehendingly. 
“Don’t you love me any more, Jules?” 

“Sweetheart, more than I can tell; that is why 
I cannot deceive you.” 

“I just can’t seem to understand,” Consuela 
faltered. 

“I am ‘damaged goods,’ dear,” he blurted out 
despairingly. 

“Not—” 

“Yes, dear. I have played double with the 
world and with myself, and now I am paying for 
it with all I love.” He buried his face in his hands 
in abject misery. 

She instinctively felt the^ depth of his despair 
and with gentle insistence pulled his hands from 
his face. 

“Tell me all about it,” she commanded softly. 

Wretchedly he told her the sordid story from 
beginning to end, chivalrously exonerating the 
woman and assuming all of the blame himself. 

“If I had only known you were coming; if I 
had only known, . . .” he finished brokenly. 

She rose and went to the window, looking out 
on the determined march of early Broadway 
pedestrians. Her little world was crumbling. 
Her inherent breeding revolted and yet she found 
that she was suffering vicariously, more for him 


112 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


than for herself. No, no, she could not give 
him up. 

She returned to her place beside him. A heavy- 
footed maid with a rattling bucket plodded over 
the thick carpets and stopped at the other end 
of the room to commence cleaning the furniture. 
He looked into Peggy’s eyes and asked quietly: 

“You don’t hate me, do you, dear?” 

“I can’t hate you, Jules. I love you,” feelingly, 
“I always will. But—plans . . .” 

“What were those plans, sweetheart?” 

“The Little Church Around the Corner.” She 
choked and could say no more. 

“You poor child!” he forgot himself in her 
suffering. “No, dear, it would be impossible, it 
would be unfair to you.” 

“It is not impossible!” she cried with a fierce¬ 
ness that startled him. She was the wounded 
female striking blindly in defense of her loved 
one. “You were trapped by a designing woman. 
Oh, I know them, with their wiles! Hers has 
been the conquest, not yours. She is probably 
exulting while you are suffering. Forget her, 
won’t you, dearest, and let us look to the future?” 
her voice had become an impassioned appeal. 
“I am ready to forgive you, Jules.” 

A wave of fury swept over him. It seemed that 
the punishment was greater than he could bear; 
that it was out of all proportion to the magnitude 
of the offense. Perhaps Peggy was right; the 
woman had tempted, not he. In his perfervid 
imagination Mrs. Claiborne’s smile was trans¬ 
muted into a sensuous grin; her very affectation 
of purity was a trap, a trick of the trade. 

His conscience scowled him down. He could 
not evade the guilt of having wronged her cruelly, 
but the burden of the offense was the violation of 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


113 


his own principles, the deliberate, bitter ravishing 
of an ideal. His self-loathing and self-abasement 
rose afresh. His was the trenchant remorse of 
the man who knows and respects the morals and 
laws, man-made or God-made, for the decency and 
safety of human society and yet wittingly violates 
one of the most sacred of the code. And with 
Mosaic sternness he had passed sentence on 
himself. 

“It breaks my heart to say it, sweetheart, but 
we will have to release each other. I am beyond 
redemption; like Humpty-Dumpty I have had a 
great fall, and all the King’s horses, all the King’s 
men, cannot put Humpty-Dumpty together again. 
You see,” he continued with a dismal smile, “how 
Mother Goose conspires with the Bible to curse 
me. I never realized how well I knew the Book. 
This one from Proverbs fits my case: ‘Whoso 
committeth adultery with a woman lacketh un¬ 
derstanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own 
soul. A wound and dishonor shall he get and his 
reproach shall not be wiped away.’ I am suffer¬ 
ing, dear, and there is no balm in Gilead. I was 
not a saint before, but now I have lost the last 
shred of self-respect. I am incapable of the great 
love that is due you; my soul is dead.” 

Peggy sat buried in thought. For her the odium 
of the offense was no longer present; she was 
willing to overlook this. The fact that he was 
humble, suffering, caused her heart to swell with 
tenderness. His extremity was her opportunity. 
She loved him all the more because of his wrong¬ 
doing, viewing all from the standpoint of the cul¬ 
prit and, with the perverted justice of love, 
sympathizing and forgiving. She had seen him 
weep, had comforted him as she would a child, 
and was drawn closer than ever to him. 


114 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


But she stood in awe of this disclosure of a 
scrupulous man’s honor; the solemnity of a law 
self-imposed, which inexorably exacted a self- 
imposed penalty for its breach, terrified her. 
How could she rescue him from himself, from 
the tortures of self-condemnation? How could 
she reach him? Now when she most supremely 
desired to alleviate his suffering she was per¬ 
ceiving her failure. Although the words were not 
suited to the occasion, the famous epigram of 
Helmer in Ibsen’s “Doll’s House” kept recurring 
to her mind: “No man sacrifices his honor even 
for one he loves.” It further increased her sense 
of failure. 

She sat holding his hand and pondering. 
Presently she resorted to the philosophy of re¬ 
ligion, of one less austere than that which de¬ 
manded “an eye for an eye.” 

“Jules, dear,” she said quietly, “God does not 
exact penalties; that would be a harsh concep¬ 
tion of Him. He only asks sincere repentance and 
the firm determination to do right, and that I 
know you have. You know what Christ said to 
the woman: ‘Go and sin no more.’ He has seen 
your suffering and has forgiven.” 

It was her last card and she scanned his face 
for its effect. 

He replied humbly: “You are good, sweetheart, 
far, far, too good for such as I.” 

She saw her failure and then the real woman 
cried out: 

“Darling, can’t I do anything? Not one little 
thing, and your heart is breaking. . . 

She arose, stumbling, blinded by tears. A wild 
wave of pity and yearning went over him. He 
stood up and took her in his arms. He could not 
bear to feel that he, gross being that he was, 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 115 


should make another woman wretched. He had 
caused havoc enough. He folded her to him in 
the deliriously tender embrace of one who bids a 
hopeless farewell to a loved one. Yes, this was 
just another refinement of his punishment: to be 
granted a view of the promised land of love and 
decency and contentment, and then told that he 
could never attain it. He must fight without 
ideals and after the War return to the dreary, 
wandering life of the hopeless. No, not that 
a resolution had already shaped itself. 
He would never return. 

She was calmer and looked at him with eyes 
brightened by her tears, in which there still glist¬ 
ened a ray of hope. He saw it and answered 
soothingly : 

“Perhaps, dear, some day I may be cleansed 
and whole again, a real man. It is hard to ex¬ 
plain my position today. I have violated an 
obligation, a duty, which was imposed by moral 
law. By the same token I was free to act, know¬ 
ing the distinction between right and wrong. I 
was not watched. I was just placed on my honor, 
with the knowledge, too, that I would dictate my 
own punishment if I played false. It is this 
liberty of conscience that I have violated, sweet¬ 
heart, that has unmanned me, made me a bad 
moral risk. As you say, God has forgiven me; 
He is not angry. It is just better for the peace 
and security of the world that such men as I be 
eliminated from the general scheme of things. 

“If, dear, some time I should change and this 
torment should leave me, then I would go to 
the ends of the earth to find you. But I don’t 
hold out any hope to myself—not now, and in 
fairness, justice, to you, darling, we shall have 
to release each other.” 


116 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


He had hinted of hope, but his heart was dust. 
He was clinging to her in a valedictory of grief. 
Soon they would be parted, he felt, forever. 

But she drew away from him. Womanlike, 
she had failed to grasp his meaning. To her law 
for law’s sake, or honor for honor’s sake, would 
be found wanting when weighed in the balance 
against a great love. 

“Darling, don’t despise me,” he pleaded. 

“I don’t despise you,” she answered bitterly, 
“but it will be a long time before I throw myself 
at the head of another man.” 

He stood dumb with misery while she went to 
a mirror and arranged her hair, the same glorious 
chestnut hair which had bewildered him as a 
storm-tossed castaway. In her uniform she was 
a more etherealized Peggy, beautiful to him be¬ 
yond compare. Her dress, with its simple lines, 
added a military touch, without rendering her 
militant, and nothing about her bespoke the 
arrant superiority assumed by some of the women 
who had donned it. She was still the supple, 
feminine Diana of pinewood and sand dune. 

Oblivious of the tragedy of human hearts 
enacted before her, the maid had stolidly con¬ 
tinued wiping the furniture. 

Peggy turned at last, having adjusted her hat 
and given her hair a final pat. 

“Come,” she said, as though nothing had hap¬ 
pened, “we haven’t had breakfast yet and time 
is flitting.” 

They spent the day together, contenting them¬ 
selves with the companionship of each other and 
dividing the time between a Spartan bench in 
Central Park, the more inviting divan of the 
hotel parlor, and leisurely meals amid the spot¬ 
less napery, crystalware and subdued colors of 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


117 


restaurants of the old order. Part of the time, 
lost in rapture of her buoyant freshness, there 
was forgetfulness and blessed nepenthe, yet these 
intervals were only gaps in his mental torture, 
hiatuses which emphasized the bleakness of 
despair. 

As for Consuela, she had forgiven without con¬ 
sulting her innate purity. The toxin of his con¬ 
fession was unconsciously infecting her and the 
fever of moral revulsion was gaining ground. 
She had been in love with Jules, like all young 
girls, in the abstract, endowing him with every 
manly virtue, and she was unprepared for this 
baring of what was to her a loathsome sin. It 
hurt her to think that her paragon was a moral 
weakling; it wounded her pride to feel that he 
had lost sight of her image long enough to become 
attached to another woman. Her more human 
self argued that his was only the way of all men! 
That it was one of the shortcomings which 
women had to overlook. But she could not apply 
this liberality to her personal case, not to her 
man. Her disgust remained unmitigated by any 
logic she could summon. It occurred to her that 
because the consciousness of sinning was so 
vividly before him, his principles must be sound. 
But what was the use of having principles unless 
they were adhered to strictly, obeyed to the 
letter? 

“No, no, no,” she told herself with sinking 
heart, “he just will not do. I love him—yes. As 
much as ever?” She could not answer this with 
certitude. There were too many conflicting 
emotions of pity and self-injury. Her heart was 
lacerated just as surely as though with steel, but 
through it all was the painful, relentless decision 


118 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


of the virgin, the unripened woman: “I have to 
give him up. I am disappointed in him.” 

By nightfall, when they had reached the Penn¬ 
sylvania Station where she was to entrain for 
Jersey, the first leg of her journey to France, the 
progress of this corrosive of thwarted love and 
ambition had been such that she hated him; un¬ 
consciously she was resenting his humility as 
much as any other thing. Preceding him thus 
to the field of action only heightened this chaste 
loftiness; she was going to take the man’s chance, 
he was to be the stay-at-home. Such a reversal 
of normal conditions did not serve to brace his 
pride, either. Instead, he felt it to be part of his 
punishment. 

The parting was conventional, as she had 
planned. “Perhaps we shall meet in France,” 
she began. 

“Perhaps,” tonelessly; “I have almost given up 
hope of getting over.” 

He made an impulsive motion as though to take 
her in his arms, but restrained himself. 

“Good-bye,” he said simply, pressing her hand. 

“Good-bye,” she replied, and he turned to go. 
She was softening rapidly as she watched him 
walk away. She imagined his shoulders were 
bent. He was not holding himself erect as a 
soldier should. 

Hers was a heart that could embrace all suffer¬ 
ing humanity as she called to him: “Jules!” 

He turned obediently and returned, a curious, 
wan smile on his lips. 

“Kiss me good-bye,” she commanded. He held 
her and kissed her again and again. 

Tears were in the eyes of both, and they were 
too full of emotion for speech. But Peggy did 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


119 


manage to say: “Remember, Jules, ‘A man may 
be down but he’s never out.’ ” 

“God bless you,” he said, her show of affection 
and the hopefulness of the homely Salvation 
Army maxim sending a glow into his heart. Again 
they parted, Peggy making her way hastily into 
the crowd that was filing through the gates. 

Outside, the mocker of his conscience, having 
rested intermittently through the day, began 
afresh: “Forgiveness! Can you really delude 
yourself there is such a thing? Can you, moral 
leper that you are, expect the honored place at 
life’s banquet? Do you think forgiveness, if there 
were such a thing, could restore to you one jot 
or tittle of your vanished self-respect? Nay, it 
is a law you have violated; pitiless, unforgiving, 
inevitable—the law of your conscience. You shall 
pay the uttermost farthing of your sentence; 
there is no remission of it. Remorse and shame 
shall abide in your heart and will not depart from 
it. And the penalty is death—it is so written.” 

Consuela belonged to the past now; he could 
never be worthy of her. There was a fleeting, 
grim satisfaction in having been able to make this 
sacrifice, but it did not appear to lessen the pun¬ 
ishment yet ahead of him. The demands of his 
conscience were insatiable. 

In addition to his own suffering, he could 
conceive the anguish of Mrs. Claiborne and he 
resolved that he would see her as soon as possible. 
There would be solace in their companionship. 


XVI 


Ten days passed before Cardot saw Mrs. Clai¬ 
borne again, and then he came in answer to an 
urgent note begging him to call at once. Fear¬ 
ful premonitions of what this summons, might 
mean zigzagged across his mind. He was hope¬ 
ful, but there was a background of black fear. 
Certainly it was too soon for anything serious to 
develop, he tried to persuade himself. Anyway 
he would soon know. “Damn it,” he swore un¬ 
der his breath, “now this may be added to my 
troubles!” 

Mrs. Claiborne opened the door before he had 
time to rap. 

“Jules!” she sobbed out, in a voice indicative 
of her deep distress. 

The world was suddenly crashing, buzzing, fall¬ 
ing about his ears. The swiftness and certainty 
with which his punishment was being meted out 
dazzled him. It was uncanny. And now the 
soldier blanched. What of the husband? Suppose 
he should turn up now, or later, and wring a con¬ 
fession from her? The world would be too small 
for both of them, and again there recurred the 
words of the Bible: “For jealousy is the rage of 
a man; therefore he will not spare in the day of 
vengeance.” Back of the lieutenant’s uniform 
was the power and dignity of the nation, but 
behind the husband was the militant righteous¬ 
ness of the world and the precedent of the ages 
since the curtain rose on the human melodrama. 

He rallied. There was still hope. 

120 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


121 


“Perhaps you have been overwrought,” he 
suggested. 

“No, no,” she cried anxiously. “What am I 
to do?” 

“I cannot help you,” he anwered blankly, fall¬ 
ing into the nearest chair. 

“Oh, why did my husband ever leave me?” 
she moaned, agonized. 

“You should have thought of him before,” and 
then, still hopefully, “would he suspect the child 
as not being his own?” 

“Mr. Claiborne is not a fool, my dear,” she 
replied with a trace of scorn. 

He was vaguely disappointed at the matter- 
of-factness of the answer, but the question had 
arisen out of a wild plan evolved from the mael¬ 
strom of his mind; an arrangement which would 
require superhuman moral courage; one which 
would elevate both of them above their fellow 
mortals into the exalted station of those heroes 
and heroines of modern fiction who could look 
down with contempt on the banal conventional¬ 
ities of society. Unconsciously the insincere but 
specious modern philosophy of marriage was mar¬ 
shaling them in his mind. 

“Bring the child into existence, dearest,” he 
said recklessly. “It will be our penance, our 
own sweet, hidden sorrow. Such a sacrifice will 
neutralize the sensual in our love. Come, let us 
brave the contumely of the world; before the eyes 
of the Lord we will be its true and legitimate 
parents. You will be only performing the natural 
function for which woman was created.” 

His heart was becoming more triumphant, as 
one by one the clandestine parents of romance 
stepped from their pages and joined the forces of 
his revolution, and the false courage of this men- 


122 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


tal intoxication minimized the dangers presented 
by such a course. Colored as his imagination 
was by the example of these unfettered and un¬ 
dimmed spirits he quite expected Mrs. Claiborne 
to take her place among them, for had she not a 
kindred courage? Here, however, he was bump¬ 
ing his shins against reality. 

“Never,” she responded with tense finality. 
“I would kill myself first.” 

He became moody and silent. Mrs. Claiborne 
was also silent, gazing meditatively through the 
curtained window now lit by the pale afternoon 
sunshine. As she sat on the divan, in negligee 
of old rose and frail lace, her high-heeled satin 
mules disclosing the graceful lines of her foot 
and ankle, she was still adorable. He was amazed 
at her composure, in contrast with his perturba¬ 
tion, yet she was the one marked for the sacrifice. 
His man’s annoyance at a difficult situation 
shrank into insignificance before her problem, 
vast, intricate, full of danger. Who was he to 
suggest a course of procedure, where his part 
was only the easy business of paternity? 

He went over and, sitting beside her, gently 
folded her to him and kissed her. 

“We will find a way out,” he said gently. 
“Worry and reproaches will do us no good.” 

“You are sweet, Jules,” she said simply, and 
then reflectively, “isn’t life horrible! We seek 
and pray and beg for happiness and when we 
have found it we are deep, deep in sin and suf¬ 
fering.” 

The plaint had in it the world-old, universal 
yearning, with the acute longing of the disap¬ 
pointed woman for happiness at any price. 

“Yes, dear,” he answered mournfully, “it has 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 123 


all ended badly. Our friendship began so inno¬ 
cently, and now it is dragged into the mire. ,, 

“Oh, sweetheart,” she cried impulsively, touched 
to the quick, “have I been such a wicked influ¬ 
ence? Tell me I haven’t.” 

“No, no; it was all my fault, but do not let 
us speak of it any more.” 

“It was not all your fault, though,” she pro¬ 
tested, “I could have prevented it all by a single 
appeal to your honor, and I left that unsaid. 
I am the one to blame, not you.” He was listen¬ 
ing intently, fascinated by this angle, which Con- 
suela had suggested but which he could not bring 
himself to accept. The woman had planned it all. 
“I had to sin to quell the rebellion that was rag¬ 
ing within me. And now I can be so good. On 
the whole,” she continued with a note of exulta¬ 
tion in her voice, “I haven’t many regrets. I 
have tasted the supreme happiness I have longed 
for so many years. How much more precious 
have been the moments of love we have spent 
together, than the years of dreary misery of the 
past.” 

It was the eternal wanton glory of the female, 
mate to the male of her choice, which cen¬ 
turies of refinement and culture have not altered. 
He felt some rancor because she had not con¬ 
sidered him, but reflected that his honor was as 
selfish as her love. Nevertheless he could not 
refrain from a bitter answer to her confession, 
which had not lessened his sense of injury. He 
knew he could make her wince. 

“Yes, but look at me! A ruined man and just 
at the time in all my life when I could have 
been of real service. I have broken faith with 
all that was good within me. How can I ever 
fly with this horror dragging me down?” 


124 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


“Darling,” she protested passionately, arms 
about his neck, “you must fly! Please, please 
do not lost sight of your ideals, no matter what 
has happened. Time will take the weight from 
your sorrow, and you must remember only the 
nice things about me. Promise me that you will, 
Jules,” she ended pleadingly, tearfully. 

“I promise. And now, about you? How 
can I leave you to fight your battles all alone? 
We are sailing in a few days, you know.” 

She placed both hands upon his shoulders and 
looked full into his eyes. 

“Dear, I think everything will turn out all 
right,” she said softly. 

“Do you really think so?” he cried eagerly. 
The momentary relief made him happy, the first 
time he had been so in days. 

For answer she nodded her head. He drew 
her to him and kissed her a long farewell. She 
turned and buried her face in her arms on the 
back of the divan. Her laces were trembling 
with her sobs. 

He bent over her, whispered “good-bye,” and 
strode out. He fancied he heard her call to him 
after he had closed the door. 


XVII 


Three days later Lieutenant Cardot, of the 
Aviation Corps of the United States Army, found 
himself sitting in a canvas deck chair on the for¬ 
ward gun platform of the transport Utopia . It 
was about seven-thirty in the morning, he 
had just finished breakfast and now, with the 
sense of holiday that a man draws from the fact 
that he has a whole day with nothing before him 
to do, yet has left no duty unperformed, he lit 
his cigar and watched the sparkling water as it 
leaped before the knife-edge of one of the slender 
destroyers convoying them. The sun was shin¬ 
ing merrily and the sea was calm. 

Cardot with his aviation squadron was bound 
for France at last. The long night was over. 
This morning he felt as though he had awakened 
from a noisome, tedious nightmare to see life as 
it was intended to be viewed, with the poet’s eye 
for beauty and melody. After all, those barn¬ 
stormers did not have a monopoly on the har¬ 
mony and fervor of the universe—a fellow could 
sit down and smoke a cigar in the invigorating 
sunshine and, with the background of a dark 
day, feel a poem, without the necessity of break¬ 
ing out into rhyme, as one might break out into 
a sort of literary rash. Cardot was feeling that 
way this morning. He was only conscious of the 
moment in which he was living, and he was 
sipping that drop by drop, as a delicious nectar. 
The past seemed unreal. It couldn’t have been the 
same Jules Cardot that trod the streets of New 
York City, committing crimes and indiscretions, 


126 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


slinging away his time and his honor, insouciant 
and bitter and left-behind. 

There were with him on the transport many 
of his boon companions of training-school days. 
Before entering the army he had thought such 
friendships existed only in the story-books, or 
only rarely through life. Indeed, the sincere 
human contacts of the army or navy do not seem 
to be so frequent in civil life, where man draws 
the veil of self-interest more closely about him. 

This freemasonry which existed in all the 
branches seemed to be more ideal in the air 
forces than in any other. In the first place, its 
initiates were very carefully chosen. It was a 
select grouping of the cream of American youth; 
men of coolness, verve and daring; men of perfect 
physique; men from the ranks of the outdoor 
sports, football, polo, baseball; men who could 
take a sporting chance with death. 

Their training was their initiation in this ex¬ 
clusive order. They had all had their “baptism 
of the air.” In France, over the lines, they 
would receive their “baptism of fire.” Here there 
would be another selection; the bolder, more 
intrepid would be assigned to pursuit, and the 
others to reconnoissance and bombing planes. 
For this work also the heart, the actual physical 
heart, would be closely inspected. High altitudes; 
fighting, with the consequent excitement, at 
twenty and twenty-two thousand feet, would 
make tremendous demands on what the doctors 
facetiously call the “pump.” The cream of the 
cream would be selected for this work—and above 
all, the fighters. 

The ambition to fly, to soar the azure vault of 
the sky, is coeval with mankind. The imagina- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


127 


tion of the early Hebrews pictured the angels 
with beautiful, shining white wings, and their 
devils and demons, the forces of evil, with the 
black, skinny wings of the bat; Daedalus and his 
son Icarus, of Greek mythology, experimented 
with wings, composed of the feathers of birds, 
and Icarus met the fate of many a neophyte that 
succeeded him. Through the ages this ardent 
desire to rival the birds of the air had persisted, 
until science gave its slow, grudging consent and 
man’s will dominated the upper reaches, and with 
their domination carried the quarreling and bick¬ 
ering of the earth to the erstwhile peaceful blue. 

It required the French genius and enthusiasm 
for invention to complete the modern airplane. 
To France were attracted the aeronauts of other 
countries who, receiving scant or scornful atten¬ 
tion in their own lands, were welcomed and en¬ 
couraged by the land of the Montgolfiers, pilots 
of the first successful balloons; the adopted home 
of Santos-Dumont and his dirigibles; the native 
home of the sailor Le Bris who, with stolid dis¬ 
regard of the punishment meted out to the 
Ancient Mariner, killed an albatross and experi¬ 
mented with its wings. It was to France that 
the Wright brothers carried their observations 
and emulation of bird-flight made on the barren 
coast of North Carolina, after vainly endeavoring 
to secure proper recognition of their efforts from 
the United States government. The great contri¬ 
bution of the Americans to the science of aviation 
was their cool, scientific attitude. They took the 
airplane out of the class of a circus wonder and 
groomed it for modern warfare. 

And now the oft-quoted prophecy of Tennyson 
had come to pass, when he 


128 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a 
ghastly dew 

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue. 

On every one’s tongue were the names and 
exploits of debonair “Aces”: Gunemeyer, Ball, 
Immelman, Lufbery, Bishop, Thaw. And there 
were many, many others whose praises remained 
unsung. 

When America entered the War there had 
come a plea from the Allies, based on the convic¬ 
tion that the war would be won in the air, for 
airplanes and more airplanes. Indeed there was 
a similar plea for ships and later for men, but 
with great plausibility the advocates of the air¬ 
plane urged that in the air the United States 
could make its strong arm felt immediately. They 
said: “We ask you for a cheap, simple device of 
wood, wire, and cloth, with an engine to drive it. 
All its parts are standardized. In a few weeks 
the nation can be equipped to turn out two thou¬ 
sand of them weekly. We want within the year 
one hundred thousand of them. We do not ask 
for a million men. We want ten thousand bright, 
active, hardy, plucky American boys between 
twenty and twenty-five years of age. We want 
to give them four months’ intensive training be¬ 
fore sending them into the air above the enemy’s 
lines.” 

Red tape, which seems to have replaced ingrati¬ 
tude as the curse of Republics, delayed appropria¬ 
tion and progress of the aerial program of the 
country, but finally construction of planes and 
training of men to man them was in full swing. 

Away from New York City and the scenes of 
his dishonor, Cardot’s spirits had risen, but there 
was in them a wild lethal intoxication. He had 
pledged himself to die, he had stricken his hand 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


129 


with death, and his heart sang with a fanatical 
fervor as he felt that each turn of the propeller 
was carrying him nearer to his tryst, his ren¬ 
dezvous, with the pale, impalpable, mighty spirit 
that brooded over the battlefields. Death, in the 
popular conception, was no longer terrible or 
cruel; human life was not so precious or sacred as 
it had been a year or so ago. It had been most 
interesting to watch the downward trend of the 
market from the time of the opening gun of the 
war. Death had become a glory and a privilege; 
the old Latin war-time maxim of dulce est pro 
patria mori had been revived. 

“I ought to be a happy man,” he mused with 
inward joy. “See how kind the fates have been! 
I have sinned and deserved death with dishonor, 
yet I am permitted to die in the service, in my 
boots and caparisons. To shed my blood on the 
fields of France. . . .” And so on and on, an 

endless paean of triumphant thanksgiving for this 
felicitous combination of circumstances which 
vouchsafed him the boon of sloughing off his 
despised material body and donning the spiritual 
emblazonries of the hero and martyr. 

Gray joined him on deck, drawing up a chair 
beside him and slapping him on the knee. 

“Well, our temperamental Frenchman seems to 
be in a pleasanter mood! Last week you were 
wearing a face of Holy Friday, but today you 
seem at peace with the world. What has been 
the matter with you?” 

“I was having an acute attack of conscience. 
Ever have one?” 

Gray looked at him questioningly. 

“I forget you’re only a child in experience,” 
Cardot commented, condescending yet envious. 

Major Ferguson, of the Medical Corps, who 


130 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


had had to conceal his age in order to enter even 
that venerable service, had taken the vacant chair 
on the other side of Cardot, and had lit a cigarette 
which he handled with the clumsiness of a novice. 
He was wooing the habit, the short smoke of the 
soldier and the exchange of the ubiquitous cylin¬ 
der of tobacco, as part of his comraderie with 
younger men. 

“What’s that you say you had?” he queried as 
he shook out the match and threw it into the 
air. 

“A moral hang-over,” explained Cardot whim¬ 
sically. 

“Ah, yes,” said the doctor leisurely, “that re¬ 
minds me of an incident in my life that I hadn’t 
thought of for twenty-five years.” 

The boys looked at him expectantly. The old 
gentleman had a gift of vivid recollection. 

“I was coming along a country road in Ken¬ 
tucky in my buggy and my attention was drawn 
to a mare and a colt standing together in a field. 
A sudden sharp clap of thunder startled them 
and off they went, the large horse running as 
fast as she could and the colt pacing along easily 
and keeping up with her. 

“Those were the days of fast horses, and one 
that could smash a record brought high price— 
forty or fifty thousand dollars, or as high as a 
hundred thousand. I thought to myself: ‘That 
colt, with proper training, would have a future!’ 

“The animals belonged to a ne’er-do-well in 
the community, a drunkard and wife-beater, with 
a large family of children. They all lived like 
dogs. I knew that he had lost the mate to the 
mare, so I kept thinking: ‘I’ll come back and 
offer to buy him a large horse in exchange for the 
colt. It will be doing him a favor because the 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 131 


two together will make a team and he can do 
some ploughing/ 

“So the next day I came back and made him 
that proposition. He said he would have to 
consult his wife and I went along so that I could 
protect my interests. They agreed and I went 
out and bought a mate for the mare. Horses 
were cheap in those days; in fact, out West they 
were killing them for shipment to France as meat. 
I think I paid twenty-five dollars for this one. 

“I took the colt back with me and, do you 
know, all the way back that transaction kept 
whipsawing in my mind; I was trying to make it 
jibe with my conscience. ‘Well/ I kept saying, 
‘I have really done the poor devil a good turn. 
I have fixed it so that he can go ahead and do 
some work, and the colt was of no use to him/ 
But just the same I felt a bit uneasy in my mind 
about it. 

“I put the colt out on my farm and paid a 
man twenty-five dollars a month to take care of 
him and train him. A week or so later I went 
out to see him put through his paces. He did a 
mile in 2:42; a few weeks after that he made it 
in 2:35, and then in 2:28, which was the record 
to date. Dr. Cornish, who had come out with 
me, said: ‘Ferguson, IT1 give you two thousand 
dollars for a half-interest in that colt/ I told 
him I wouldn’t sell it for two or for ten thousand 
dollars. 

“Well, sir, do you know that that horse was 
on my mind all the time, that confounded animal 
was with me beside every sickbed, but I was 
stubborn. I still kept arguing that I had done 
nothing wrong. 

“About three weeks later the trainer came in 
to tell me that although the colt looked all right, 


132 THE WALKING WOUNDED 

in reality it was ‘string-halted’; and that after 
every time he ran it he would have to walk it 
around to keep it from getting stiff. He said 
it was good for only a year or two before it would 
finally go lame. 

“In the meantime, the fellow I had bought him 
from was going all over town telling everybody 
how Dr. Ferguson had cheated him out of his 
colt and threatening to kill me on sight. So there 
I was—the horse no account and my life in 
danger. 

“The following day this fellow came by my 
farm in his buggy while I was out looking at 
some stock. He was drunk and yelling, cursing 
and reviling me, when suddenly his horse became 
frightened and ran away with him, pitching him 
out into the ditch by the roadside and breaking 
every bone I believe it is possible for a man to 
break and still live. 

. “We picked him up and took him to his home. 
There weren’t any of the doctors that cared to 
handle the case, the fellow didn’t pay any of his 
bills, so I undertook to go Over there. I figured 
he couldn’t do much harm to me in the condition 
he was in. I stayed up all night with him and 
the next day I saw Dr. Cornish. I told him all 
the facts about the colt, but added that I thought 
it was good for two years and in that time he 
could clean up five thousand dollars easy by run¬ 
ning it at different fairs. I wound up by telling 
him I would take a thousand dollars for it, for 
the whole machine. 

“I sold the horse and with the money I went 
over and paid up the mortgage on my patient’s 
house, and there was enough left over to send 
his oldest daughter to business school. She later 
obtained a fine job in the county clerk’s office 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 133 


and the man himself set up a little stand of some 
kind. So, all in all, I felt satisfied that I had 
made all possible amends and my conscience was 
clear. I really hadn’t thought of that incident 
for twenty-five years.” 

The old doctor looked around serenely at his 
auditors. Cardot envied a man who could live to 
such a ripe age and have so few skeletons in the 
closets of his mind. He was ruminating, com¬ 
paring the peccadillo of the doctor with the social 
wrong he had committed. 

“You were fortunate,” he said finally, “in being 
able to repent and make reparation, but suppose 
that both of these things were impossible; can 
you imagine such a case?” Unconsciously he was 
seeking the unction of professional advice. 

The doctor caught the spirit of the boy’s ques¬ 
tion and deliberated some little time before 
answering. It appeared as though he had first 
to answer it for himself. 

“Cardot,” he said finally, “I always think of sin 
in the terms of the physician, as a disease or an 
imperfection which has to be remedied. Of course, 
it is an offense entailing a penalty, but disease 
also exacts its penalties. The suffering and pun¬ 
ishment that follow in the wake of sin are the 
medicine designed for its cure; they are intended 
to help and save the victim. Doesn’t that appeal 
to you as reasonable? The Lord has endowed us 
with common sense, more or less. Isn’t it right 
for us to credit Him with common sense? Do 
you think He would have put mortals on this 
earth with capabilities of plunging themselves 
into eternal ruin? All through nature we see 
manifestations of Divine love and providence. 
The body is equipped with devices for isolating 
poisons, eliminating them or casting a septic wall 


134 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


around them, and that is true also in the soul of 
man, which is nearer God than his body.” 

Cardot admired the optimism of the old doctor; 
there was a soothing quality in the very tones 
of his voice. He was grateful that the older man 
had not spoken of the hereafter and offered him 
that spurious currency, the promissory note with 
which religion has transacted so much of its 
business. Still he could not help feeling that there 
were many fallacies in the argument. The doc¬ 
tor had spoken of poisons, but not of overdoses, 
which swept their victim away. Human for¬ 
giveness was not as simple a thing as the doctor 
had made it out. Cardot continually pictured him¬ 
self as the culprit before the bar at which a stern, 
impersonal, mechanical law was being admin¬ 
istered. The Judge was merely doing his duty in 
a passionless way. Society dare not remit the 
penalty of the offenders against its laws. 

He did not contest the point further, feeling 
that it might lead to a highly metaphysical or 
theological discussion. However, the problem 
had never presented itself so vividly as it did now. 
He kept wondering if there were any way out, 
any way of repentance, but the offense appeared 
to be un-atonable and the chance therefore hope¬ 
less of being “at-one” with himself. 


XVIII 


At the departure of Lieutenant Cardot, Mrs. 
Claiborne was left like a ship hung on a hidden 
rock, far out in a bleak and stormy ocean. Should 
she salvage or destroy? She was the captain of 
her destinies and, in either event, the odium of 
the wreck would attach to her alone. The situa¬ 
tions in which she would solve her problem pre¬ 
sented themselves with the distinct sharpness of 
objects after a shower; there was no longer any 
haze; her perceptions were cold and brittle. She 
found for the first time in her life of rosy-hued 
religion that she could regard suicide dispas¬ 
sionately, as if detached from her own personality. 
A mere pull of the trigger and the ship would 
be scuttled, the water would close about it and 
it would no longer imperil navigation. That 
was one course to pursue, but she abandoned it, 
at least temporarily, because of the consequences 
with which it was fraught. The bullet hole might 
be clean, but the rent made in the fabric of her 
family life, and of society, would be jagged and 
irreparable. 

Her emotions swept over her like summer 
squalls, kaleidoscopic in their variety and color. 
One of her first flaming impulses was to go to 
her husband, tell him all, and flaunt her condi¬ 
tion before him, boast of it as a consequence of 
his neglect; to turn tigress and bear the child; to 
curse him. But when the feeling had passed over, 
she could only sadly acknowledge the absurdity 
of such a plan. She was not the tigress type; she 
lacked the Amazonian courage it demanded. 


136 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Besides, neither he nor the world could ever con¬ 
done a woman’s weakness when her virtue was 
involved. Strangely enough he was assuming a 
new value; their positions had suddenly been 
reversed. He was the one sinned against and she 
was the sinner. He had trusted her and she had 
betrayed him. She railed against the smug de¬ 
ceiver within her, which had permitted her 
to regard her liaison as a measure of retalia¬ 
tion. The fact that she was caught with the 
goods, as it were, should not heighten her sense 
of guilt, but she had to admit, with disgust, that 
it did. It constituted a separate offense, a breach 
of the Spartan law which justified stealing if it 
was successfully carried out. 

As to Cardot, she had written him a note a 
day or so after he had last visited her. “Have 
no anxieties on my account, dear,” she said, “all 
is well with me, and remember only the best. 
Keep up the fight for civilization, and for your¬ 
self.” 

Even as she wrote them, the words seemed trite 
and futile; empty, glaring forms. He was Loth¬ 
ario, the carefree soldier who betrays the country 
girl and leaves for parts unknown, bragging and 
smirking to his companions of his conquests. 
Perhaps he was doing that now. She was merely 
an amorous incident in his life. No, no, she told 
herself, as mellow recollection dissolved her 
animus, that was not the Jules she first knew, 
the clean boy who had so proudly shown her the 
picture of his sweetheart; the pathetically lonely 
youth that had accompanied her home on that 
first afternoon, or the vivacious, whole-souled 
boy-man of the sparkling, golden hours they had 
spent together, when the wings of his uniform 
had flashed like the shield of Sir Galahad as they 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


137 


passed in their slow lovers’ walk from the shade 
of the trees into the patches of sunlight. She, 
herself, had made the comparison and called him 
her knight. Like all women, she knew men and 
their attitudes and moods, and instinctively rec¬ 
ognized them. Theirs had been at first an idyllic, 
Platonic love, something more poetic than a 
brother and sister affection, something not so 
ardent as the passion of sweethearts; something 
infinitely tender. He, too, had capacity to suffer; 
he, too, must be suffering. 

It was another experiment in friendship that 
had ended disastrously; they had played with 
fire and were burned. They had crossed the 
infinitely slender line which separates right from 
wrong, and now, in the aftermath of sorrow and 
torture of soul, it was hard for her to say whether 
the devil had tempted her, or she had tempted 
the devil. Rather the latter. Of course, it was 
the latter, she told herself bitterly. The devil 
was a misused saint beside her. With her gen¬ 
erations of culture and clean, quiet family life 
behind her, she had so far forgotten herself. 
Forgotten, nonsense! She could not stifle that 
insistent small voice with a lie. She had com¬ 
mitted herself deliberately, feeling that she could 
trifle with sin and come away unscathed; now 
she was Lady Macbeth, sighing that all the per¬ 
fumes of Arabia could not again sweeten her soul. 

The agony of a fine character is the most 
tragic of griefs, but, as though this suffering were 
not enough, there came an onward-marching 
shame, from which she knew not where to turn 
for refuge. At first she had deluded herself with 
the belief that after all she might have been mis¬ 
taken, but now she was certain. 

There was still time. Other women had oblit- 


138 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


erated the traces of their shame; now she, the 
fastidious Julia Douglass, must undergo this 
ordeal. But here she ran again into the blind 
alley of self. She found she could not bring her¬ 
self to consult any reputable physician, fearing 
that after the terrible prostration of guilty con¬ 
fession, her case might be coldly refused. Chills of 
horror passed over her when she thought of leer¬ 
ing mid-wives and doctors of questionable repu¬ 
tation, with their dirty offices and unclean para¬ 
phernalia. There was no one to whom she could 
turn. If Jules had only remained. . , . He 

would have helped her. 

Weeks passed and nothing had been done 
toward the alleviation of her condition; she was 
tasting the bitterest of life’s bitterness. In the 
quest for some solution of her problem she had 
become a wanderer, seeking the crowded streets, 
regarding the people blankly as one who is deso¬ 
late, homeless and unloved. Her friends, noticing 
the change, besieged her with alarmed questions, 
but she put them off with the usual plea of war- 
strain and general restlessness. 

Yes, the novels had lied. How could she ever 
have believed that a self-respecting woman could 
enter into intimate relations with a man other 
than her husband and retain any vestige of her 
virtue? It was a gossamer texture which violence 
dissipated in thin air, as the traceries of frost melt 
before the sun. 

Yet, alternating with these bitter thoughts, 
there came at times a curious sensation of brood¬ 
ing tenderness and awakened womanhood. In 
this mood the jests of fate seemed less cruel, the 
world not so harsh, and she wondered if she did 
not stand upon the threshold of a fuller life. 
Why, after all, should she not bear the child, 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


139 


the consummation so devoutly hoped and prayed 
for, the mirage in the desert of an unhappy union, 
which had so many times appeared before her 
eyes? For this relief had her starving organs 
cried through the long nights when she had 
listened to the noises of the city dwindling from 
a flood to a meandering trickle of sound and 
then, as day grew on, gradually resuming their 
volume; nights of white torture, when she had 
tried every method short of drugs to induce sleep. 

“No, no, no, it cannot be,” she kept repeating, 
and mentally she shrank as before a knife when 
she thought of the barefaced odium of the Eng¬ 
lish term applied to such a child. Still, in the 
midst of her positive denial of such a possibility, 
her hands mechanically began to busy themselves 
with sewing and knitting of little things, which 
she hid with a meticulous care altogether pathetic. 

And one day fell the hammer of doom—a tele¬ 
gram from her husband announcing that he was 
returning. She thanked the Lord fervently that 
he had wired. But he was not far off. The 
message had come from Chicago. Now she must 
act quickly. 

It had been the event most dreaded of all the 
complexities which her situation presented, yet 
she was glad the suspense was to be ended. 
She could not tell if there had been any note 
in her letters to inspire it, but his responses were 
of increasing tenderness; he was referring con¬ 
stantly to the War and his desire to be in uni¬ 
form. His work was not nearly completed but 
she was aware that he was vaguely dissatisfied. 
She had not intended by anything she said to 
hasten his return. If he would only enlist and 
be sent to France, there would still be opportunity 
for deception. If—if . . . the chances were 


140 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


that he would be stationed in some training 
camp near New York City or, wherever stationed, 
would be granted leave of absence to come home 
before being sent abroad. 

There was nothing left for her to do, but to go; 
to sink herself without trace. 

The following morning, a few hours before her 
husband was due to arrive, she packed a few be¬ 
longings in her suit-case and, passing through 
the dining-room, left a short note under the 
flower vase on the table. 

“I have gone forever, Fred,” it ran. “Please 
do not search for me, and if you can find it in 
your heart, forgive me.” It was the conventional 
dramatic note of the fleeing wife. 

For a moment she imagined herself, facing her 
husband across the white linen, waiting on him, 
satisfying his every whim. 

“I would be so good to you, Fred,” she whim¬ 
pered. “I am humble, submissive, meek; all the 
rebellion is gone. I have purchased goodness, 

but it has cost me enough.Dear God, 

won’t you give me a chance to expiate, only a 
chance.” 

Her courage stiffened; she dried her eyes and 
went out. At the Grand Central Station she 
inquired about trains to Chicago. One was 
leaving in fifteen minutes. She did not buy a 
ticket. Instead, galvanized by an inexplicable 
woman’s instinct, she returned, tore up the note 
and awaited the coming of her husband. 



XIX 


The almost superhuman mechanism of Frederic 
Claiborne had been driven relentlessly for years by 
a burning ambition to make a name for himself 
and to scale the heights of his profession as a 
civil engineer. He was a man, every inch of him, 
with a man’s capacity for affection and desire to 
be loved. But he had steadfastly sacrificed every 
tender emotion, feeding it to the Moloch within 
him. This had not always been the case; in his 
youth he had looked forward to matrimony as the 
normal and happy state of every real man, but he 
had begun the subversive process early in his 
career, and it had become a habit when he mar¬ 
ried. He liked to compare his life to the moun¬ 
tains amid which he was now working—stern, 
chaste, barren peaks to whose summits he must 
aspire, for the ascent of which he must save his 
strength; nor must he dilute it with softening in¬ 
fluences. At the foot of the mountains lay the 
broad, fertile plains of comfortable married life 
to which he would some day return. 

But, as with so many other people, the uni¬ 
versal solvent of War was fast dissolving his 
structure of life. With the entry of the United 
States into the conflict, his work was belittled. 
Over there were still higher peaks to scale. War 
made a strong appeal to his egotism as well as 
his patriotic fervor. 

Its principal effect, however, was to turn the 
tide of his thoughts to his wife. He was expe¬ 
riencing the flood of tenderness toward the 
weaker member of his household that came with 

141 


142 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


the reflection that she might be in danger, either 
actual or threatened. 

He acquainted his chief, the bluff, coarse- 
featured Kent, with the trend of his thought and 
his growing dissatisfaction with civil life. The 
latter was plainly worried. 

“Fred,” he said, “you know damn well we can’t 
spare you. Good men are getting scarcer and 
scarcer—and, well, you can’t go. That’s all there 
is to it.” 

“But I’m quite a young man yet,” Claiborne 
persisted, arguing as much with himself as with 
his superior. “I can shoulder a musket, or serve 
in the Engineer Corps. You know how badly 
they are in need of engineers over there now.” 

“I know, I know,” answered the older man 
more patiently, “that’s very true. But we need 
men on this side, too. You’ll be exempted on 
two grounds: you are engaged in a public service 
work, and you are a married man with a depend¬ 
ent wife.” 

“That’s the point I was coming to,” flared 
Claiborne. “That might technically exempt me, 
but it occurs to me that the able-bodied married 
men are just the ones who ought to be in it. 
They have more at stake. I wouldn’t want it 
to be said in after years that some other man had 
to protect my home, while I was safely ensconced 
in the mountains of Oregon.” 

“Sentimentally speaking, you may be right; 
logically, you are all wrong. This work has to 
go on and you know it. There is too much de¬ 
pendent on you at the time for us to release you, 
so please don’t let me hear any more of this 
brand of war-talk.” 

Kent was handling him as diplomatically as 
possible as the bugbear of disaffection on the 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


143 


part of his righthand assistant loomed before him. 
He had even gone so far as to insert the word 
“please,” an appeal that he had long since dropped 
from his vocabulary in addressing his men. 

But the war was beckoning like the vague, 
formless ghosts of the Cascade recesses, and 
Claiborne wrote asking for information as to a 
commission in the Engineer Corps. He felt sure 
that once he had made up his mind he could 
easily get away. In due time he received a com¬ 
munication stating that in view of his schooling 
and experience a captain’s commission would be 
tendered him at any time that he saw fit to 
accept. 

It was on the tenth anniversary of his mar¬ 
riage that he determined with crisp decision to 
start East. He would not have remembered the 
date had it not been for an entry in an old 
diary that he had picked up inadvertently late that 
afternoon. The daily record had not been con¬ 
tinued and the explanation of its existence in the 
camp was that it contained some of his earlier 
scientific notes. It was the sole memento of his 
wife that he carried with him and he had stumbled 
on it only by chance. 

And now he re-read the legend: “Today I have 
married the one woman in the world—dearest, 
sensitive, fine-fibred Julia—an aristocrat to her 
finger-tips. What terrific responsibility I feel for 
her happiness. Herewith I highly resolve that 
not the tiniest cloud, not the least fleck of dis¬ 
cord shall cast its shadow over her. She is 
the one woman who will make a complete man 
of me. . . 

Could he ever have been capable of writing 
such extravagance, he asked himself. Yet he 
shuddered to think of the few times he had per- 


144 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


mitted a really conjugal sentiment to linger in his 
single-tracked brain. 

The discovery of this poor, long-forgotten 
screed proved to be the continental divide be¬ 
tween the cold, ambitious man and the sympa¬ 
thetic, loving husband. She had had ambitions, 
too, he recalled. Her love for music amounted 
almost to genius; she was a devotee of literature 
and the arts, yet he had listened impatiently, as 
to a child’s prattle, when she had talked of them. 
She had passionately desired children, had openly 
begged him to allow her to become a mother; he 
had ruthlessly condemned her to a life of priva¬ 
tion, in which this natural instinct, together with 
her special talents for self-expression, were to be 
suppressed. 

“Poor Julia,” he said tenderly, visioning her 
reserved, silent loveliness, “poor Julia; I’ve given 
you a pretty bad deal. When I get home I’ll 
do my best to make up for it.” 

The writing had become dimmed with the 
pent up grief of a stubborn nature. Never once 
did it occur to him that the castles of the heart 
should not be left without their guardians; that, 
starving for comradeship, his wife might have 
sought elsewhere the sympathy denied by him. 
No, she was made of finer clay. 

He arose from the bunk on which he was 
sitting, secured a telegraph blank and wrote out 
a congratulatory message, announcing his inten¬ 
tion of following hard on its heels. Then he 
went to have it out with Kent. 

On board the transcontinental express that 
hurtled itself through the jagged granite cuts and 
sylvan gloom of the mountains, Claiborne’s 
thoughts of home outran its swiftest onset. There 
was now in him an ardent longing to see his 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 145 


wife, to crush her in his arms and beg forgive¬ 
ness for his neglect, a desire heightened by the 
thought that she had never chided him, never 
accused him of denying her affections. 

“It was never in her to do that,” he reflected. 
“Too much pride. ... To think what a fool 
I have been!” 

There was a trace of anxiety in his face. Sup¬ 
pose it were too late to make amends? No, he 
concluded, the sentimental value of the War 
would cure that and when he returned they 
would begin life on a new basis. He would grant 
her every desire. 

The reunion of husband and wife under such 
circumstances would naturally be most affecting; 
it was a trying ordeal for both of them. In the 
mysterious loom of marriage their lives were 
woven together and on her part, though her heart 
was shaken with misery and dread, the advent of 
her husband was strangely comforting. It was 
the first ray of the morning sun after the terror 
of night, bringing with it the promise of the 
resumption of suspended workaday life. She 
scanned his face for a hint of suspicion of a 
change in her and, seeing none, gained confidence 
in herself. 

As for him, he experienced the delicacy of the 
lover in patching up a quarrel wherein he was 
conscious of being most to blame. His stiff¬ 
necked disposition was seeking the path of least 
resistance to reconciliation, but as the days 
passed and he saw her always happy to be near 
him, turning her gentle face to him with no sign 
of rancor, he became convinced that she held 
none, and his restraint melted. 

He withheld from her the information that he 


146 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


was applying for a commission in the army, hesi¬ 
tating to impart it because he feared that she 
might think he had come home only for this 
reason and that New York City was merely a 
stop-over on his way. But it was only a few 
days after his arrival that his commission as 
captain arrived, and then it was that his tender¬ 
ness began to terrify her. She felt that she could 
not bear to alter her opinion of him, to lessen the 
distance or cancel the ancient grudge. It was a 
measure of self-protection against the tidal wave 
of condemnation which blackly threatened her. 

That evening, seated on the divan on which 
she had received the blandishments of her lover, 
she almost expected it to proclaim her guilt 
aloud. She shuddered from the touch of her 
husband’s arm about her neck as she would from 
a serpent, yet she dare not by any word or sign 
betray herself. She must play her role of solic¬ 
itous, loving wife. 

“I suppose you will soon be leaving me all alone 
again, won’t you?” She was afraid she had said 
it too hopefully. “‘It seems our whole married 
life has just been a series of partings. Dearest, 
you must make a list of all the things you will 
need so I can get them ready for you.” 

“I will need only the usual knitted articles— 
sweaters and socks, which the Red Cross are 
furnishing so abundantly that you needn’t bother 
about them. You and I, sweetheart, are to have 
a second honeymoon. There must be nothing to 
mar our pleasure before I sail. The vita nuova 
is to date from this time, isn’t it, dear?” 

He was watching the effect of these words with 
trembling anxiety. Never, he thought, had her 
bosom been so white; never had her fingers lain 
uoon his hand so softly caressing. Never before 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


147 


had he sounded the depths of her beseeching eyes. 

“Yes, Fred,” she answered simply, “it is to date 
from this time.” 

“Do you mean that you forgive me for all my 
neglect of you?” He was moved to tears of 
ecstasy as he crushed her in his arms and kissed 
her. 

“Everything, my husband.” His ardor was 
sending a genial warmth through her soul. She 
would not for worlds forego that sympathy. 

“It is much more than I deserve, heart of 
mine,” he whispered, still holding her close. “I 
see now what a brute I have been.” 

“No, no, no!” she protested. “Let us have no 
regrets. The past is dead and the new life is 
begun. Oh, we shall be happy,” she cried, sit¬ 
ting up suddenly and clapping her hands, while 
he watched her with rapt amazement. “We will 
blend all of the joy of the present and all of the 
sorrow of the past in a wonderful symphony while 
you are here. It will be a concentration, a whole 
lifetime of emotions crowded into a few days. 
The troubles of the years gone by will be only a 
background to make our present happiness 
brighter, won’t they, sweetheart? Besides, they 
say sorrow is a part of love—and now, is it too 
late to go out? We will begin our festivities this 
very night.” 

“It is the very shank of the evening.” He con¬ 
sulted his watch. “Put on your things. We will 
go to the New Amsterdam roof.” 

“I’d love it,” she cried, jumping to her feet. 
At the door she turned, “Freddy, you remember 
the little blue dress that you admired so much 
when we were first married? I have one almost 
identical. I will wear that.” 

In her room as she stooped to open her bureau 


148 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


drawer, Julia, the dissembler and hypocrite, glared 
at her from her mirror, but she frowned her 
down. Tonight she would be happy, her state 
of nervous excitement, approaching intoxication, 
promised that. And if necessary she would drink 
to sustain it. “Come,” said Omar, “fill the cup, 
and in the fire of spring your winter-garment 
of repentance fling.” 

And so for five happy days they were insep¬ 
arable. He was a devoted lover, content during 
all the extravaganzas or plays they attended to 
feast his eyes on her. Happiness to him, also, 
had come as a shock and with an intoxicating 
effect after the years of abstemious aspiration. 
She entered into his mood, divining that his 
spirit needed her spirit; she dressed in the clothes 
she knew would please him, she laughed and said 
daring things and forsook her customary dignity. 
It was the Indian summer of the austere winter 
of repentance, but again and again in intervals 
of mental sobriety she told herself in the words 
of Louis XV, “After this, the deluge!” On the 
fifth day after his home-coming he received his 
orders to embark for France. 


XX 


Cardot and his outfit reached Brest in safety, 
and here they rehearsed and practiced the flying 
tactics they had learned in the United States. 
Then they were transferred to Issoudon for in¬ 
struction in acrobatics and formation flying. After 
a few weeks of this Jules and a number of other 
fliers who had started the ground course at the 
same time, were assigned to a squadron at 
Columbey-le-Belle. 

Among these men was Grey, over whom Cardot 
had established a sort of big brother protectorate. 
He always thought of him as “little Gray,” the 
boy was so ingenuous and pure-minded in his 
twenty-one years. The tenor of his life seemed to 
be quite undisturbed by unhallowed desires; he 
was forever talking of his girl in Missouri, and 
of the future with her that he was looking for¬ 
ward to after the War. Yet he seemed utterly 
fearless, never giving a thought, apparently, to 
the day when they should meet the Boche in 
mid-air. Cardot wondered what his own conduct 
would be under fire. Death he would welcome, 
but would the Lord vouchsafe him the death of 
a brave soldier, did he deserve such a privilege? 
Years counted here, he had to admit, and tem¬ 
perament, too. He was given to too much intro¬ 
spection. 

They were full-fledged chasse pilots now, mak¬ 
ing daily flights in formation with more experi¬ 
enced men over the lines. They hovered high 
over the reconnaissance and bombing planes, 
dodging the high explosives, which barked around 
149 


150 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


them with a mastiff-like “woof!” At first this 
had been tremendously exciting sport, but as he 
learned to avoid them easily by shifting position 
and getting out of range, he began to look for¬ 
ward with tense expectancy to his first encounter 
with the unseen enemy, the hawk and, at the same 
time, the submarine of the skies, inasmuch as 
German planes lurked beneath the clouds as 
German boats beneath the waters. 

Stirring events followed one another in rapid 
succession and with great variety; no two situa¬ 
tions seemed alike. One day he was flying over 
the lines with an observer when a high explosive 
shell crashed into his engine, stopping it almost 
instantaneously. Fortunately his machine had 
considerable headway and his altimeter registered 
around eight thousand meters, so he felt con¬ 
fident he would be able to reach his field. He 
was gliding easily to earth, when the observer, 
reaching forward and striking him on the shoul¬ 
der, called: 

“I wish you’d look what we’re getting into!” 

Cardot cast his eyes below and there was a 
long, sinuous line of gray—German soldiers in 
formation, headed, apparently, in the direction of 
the field. His heart beat violently against his 
ribs. 

“I guess this ends our usefulness for the dura¬ 
tion,” he called back. “Let’s get ready to fire 
the plane when we land.” 

But as they approached nearer, they saw that 
the line was punctuated with figures in the 
familiar O. D. The formidable array were cowed 
and exhausted German prisoners being marched 
to the rear. 

After three weeks of vivid experiences, Cardot 
and others of his squadron were granted a three 
days’ leave, which generally meant a visit to 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 151 


Paris. And so they started out, an animated, 
care-free group, happy to be relieved from the 
strain they had been under, each one eager to 
seek the pleasure that individually appealed to 
him. Since their time was short, this quest would 
necessarily be intensive. A few like Cardot had 
never seen the world-famous capital, and merely 
to visit its gardens and art galleries, sit in the 
open-air cafes, sip their wine and watch the cos¬ 
mopolitan crowd, promised sufficient amusement. 

Cardot and Gray registered at the Hotel Con¬ 
tinental, and together made a tour of the city, 
viewing buildings and monuments and boule¬ 
vards that have made the postal card famous. 

On Sunday afternoon, a rare, sunshiny, fall 
afternoon on which all Paris, military and civil, 
exotic and native, was promenading beneath the 
chestnut trees, Cardot left Gray sleeping to join 
the endless procession. He had left the Champs 
filysees and the Arc de Triomphe and turned 
into the Bois de Boulogne, when above a cease¬ 
less flow of French endearments, emanating from 
the lips of a voluble poilu and directed to an 
equally animated little French miss, he heard a 
familiar ripple of laughter. Consuela’s, of course! 
He was not surprised; he had come to Paris with 
the premonition that he would meet someone 
from home in this central office of the world, 
possibly Consuela, though he had not permitted it 
to become too ardent a wish, fearing with innate 
superstition that the desire might defeat the op¬ 
eration of chance, which flings the unusual, the 
unexpected, to the surface. 

Looking ahead of the garrulous French couple, 
he saw her in her blue nurse’s uniform, clinging 
to the arm of an American officer, who was 
looking down at her with a quizzical face, in 


152 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


which he fancied there was just a little too much 
affection. 

He quickened his pace and came up beside 
them. Consuela was startled at first, and then 
beamed with delight. 

“Jules!” she exclaimed, “Of all the people in 
the world! Oh, isn’t it wonderful . . . Lieu¬ 

tenant Cardot, Captain Duane.” 

The men bowed, shook hands and murmured 
their pleasure. Cardot noted the caduceus of the 
Medical Corps on his collar. 

“I just can’t get over meeting you,” continued 
Consuela enthusiastically. 

“Paris is the place where all the bad pennies of 
the world turn up now,” said Cardot. “And how 
have you been, where are you stationed, how do 
you like it over here, and everything? I have 
a perfect machine gun barrage of questions to 
fire at you.” 

“And I have at you too. You must excuse us, 
Clarence,” begged Consuela, turning to the cap¬ 
tain, who was listening to these personalities with 
a little coolness. “Lieutenant Cardot is an old 
friend.” Cardot winced when she called the man 
by his first name. There immediately sprang up 
between the two the instinctive dislike of rivals, 
while Consuela rambled on, blandly encouraging 
Cardot to accompany them and apparently enjoy¬ 
ing the situation. 

“My time is very limited,” protested the flier. 
“I have to report back at the field this evening.” 
The captain brightened considerably and inclined 
his head as though beginning a nod of good- 
bye-glad-to-have-met-you, but Consuela begged 
and Cardot lingered. 

“Come on, Jules, stroll with us awhile and then 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 153 


we will all have lunch together. You can refer 
them to me if you are A. W. O. L.” 

“The old excuse —cherchez la femme, 9 ’ said 
Cardot yielding. “It doesn’t get you anywhere 
in the army, does it, Captain?” 

“Hardly,” answered the latter. “Rather it’s an 
excuse that’s been sadly overworked.” 

“I am stationed at the hospital at Vichy,” went 
on Consuela, looking up at the aviator with some¬ 
thing of the old gentle light in her eyes. “Can’t 
you look me up some time in going to or from 
your station?” 

“You certainly may expect a visit,” agreed 
Cardot heartily. “I am coming on my next leave, 
provided I continue to evade the Boche.” 

“If you have a run-in with them and come off 
second best, trust the old M. C. to take good care 
of you,” interposed the captain. “You know we 
weren’t sent over here as entertainers.” 

“You are entirely too modest, Doctor,” said 
Consuela mischievously. “I consider you quite a 
capital entertainer, and Paris is still alluring.” 

He shot a look at her as though not quite sure 
of her meaning, and apparently he preferred 
the military title to the professional. He was 
rather a handsome type, with heavy black hair, 
full red lips, with much of the animal apparent in 
his features. He was booted and spurred and 
Sam-Browned. Military life evidently made a 
great appeal to his ego, and Cardot pictured the 
commotion he must cause, striding into his hos¬ 
pital amid the frightened “Attention, men!” of 
his underlings. He pitied the poor soldiers that 
must come under the surveillance of one of these. 
Yet Consuela was apparently attracted; there 
was an air of intimacy, as Jules had noted when 
she called him by his first name. Cardot waited 


154 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


for further evidence and registered a vow that if 
the doctor wore the spurs, he would give him a 
chance to win them. Things had changed since 
the gloomy day he had bidden her good-bye at 
the station in New York; the complexion of the 
world was not the same now. He was not ready 
to cry quit-claim to his interests; he had never 
felt that he had permanently relinquished his 
rights, and now that they were threatened he 
determined to fight for them to the last ditch. 

Another favorite illusion of romanticism had 
gone by the board. The heroines of prose and 
poetry might pine for lost loves, but certainly the 
latter-day woman did not. There are rules, of 
course, which prove the exception, but shorn of 
the drool of ages, there is certainly no good 
reason why the woman, who has most at stake, 
should not choose and select—in other words, 
“shop”—to her best advantage in the marriage 
mart, even though forced to quiet her heart as 
she would a child that nagged for something it 
couldn’t have. Love, with the woman of today, 
abides more and more in the realm of the gilt- 
edged security, and less in the nebulous land of 
the affections, and Cardot sensed in the captain 
the dangerous appeal of affluence. 

By this time they had reached the Cafe de 
Longchamps and were conducted to a table by a 
bowing gargon. Consuela was still favoring Car- 
dot with much of the excited joyousness of her 
conversation, and he was beginning to believe that 
after all the intimacy was only one born of pro¬ 
pinquity in the hospital. As they sat down, he 
was repeating for the third time his intention of 
visiting her at the first opportunity, trusting his 
ardent gaze to convey what the purport of that 
mission would be. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 155 


'‘Since you are progressing so nicely with your 
French,” she said when they had seated them¬ 
selves and the waiter had passed the lists, “per¬ 
haps you can test your ability on the carte de 
jour.” 

“Yes, let this be my pleasure,” begged Cardot 
hurriedly, anxious for this advantage. Also it 
recalled that last day they had spent together in 
New York City. 

The doctor was plainly put out and as the 
aviator began to pore over the items he asked in 
a reproving aside: 

“Aren’t you beginning rather early, my dear, to 
conserve our resources?” 

Cardot looked up quickly. 

“I was just saying to Miss Childers,” said the 
doctor in sharp tones, “that I thought the honors 
should be ours, inasmuch as she has a perfectly 
good fiance with her. So you really must con¬ 
sent to -be our guest. We are still celebrating, 
you know.” 

It was a bolt out of the blue, dazing him, but 
Cardot answered with all the sangfroid he could 
summon: 

“I yield, of course, in that event. Please ac¬ 
cept my felicitations, both of you. I wish you 
all the happiness in the world, and Peggy knows 
that comes from my heart, don’t you?” 

She nodded assent as Cardot shook hands with 
both of them. 

The doctor became gayer on assuming the role 
of host and head of family. Having performed 
the ritual of the menu with the air of a boule- 
vardier, he hitched his chair nearer Peggy and 
putting his arm around her requested Cardot’s 
opinion as to whether he had not chosen the 
finest girl in the world. 


156 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Peggy squirmed, mutely protesting, whereat he 
desisted, but remained extremely solicitous. It 
was a painfully embarrassing moment for Cardot. 

“No more of this so-called single blessedness 
for me, Lieutenant,” he said patronizingly. “When 
you find the right little woman, as I have, you 
want to cleave to her. They are few and far 
between these days.” 

Cardot nodded in agreement. The waiter 
brought chicken liver sautes, and wiping the 
glasses to crystalline clearness filled them with 
wine. 

“I suppose a toast is in order,” said Cardot, 
raising his glass. 

“They have been out of style for a long time,” 
Consuela objected, reddening. 

“Oh, let the lieutenant get it off his chest, if he’s 
got a good one,” the captain interrupted. “I 
always envied the man that could remember 
them.” 

“I don’t remember any, either,” said Cardot. 
“Mine has to be impromptu. Let me see,” he 
found he had to study. Several epigrams which 
came to his mind alluding to the other man’s 
happiness would not do. 

“How does this sound?” he asked finally. 

“ ‘Here’s to the bride, the end of the War, 

And the fragrant pines of home; 

The moonlight charm of a palm-clad shore, 
And a castaway out of the foam.’ 

“I had to include that last line in order to make 
it rhyme,” Cardot explained to the captain when 
they had all drunk in response. “It has refer¬ 
ence to the time I was a poor shipwrecked sailor 
and Miss Childers succored me. Quite romantic, 
wasn’t it? It is proof positive of the heart of 
gold.” 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 157 


Consuela put out her lips with a maternal pity. 
“Poor Jules!” she said softly. 

“I think she has told me the story,” said the 
captain flatly, devoting himself to the carving of 
a generous steak, which had just been laid before 
him. “Here’s another reminder of home.” 

Throughout the meal Cardot was eating out his 
heart and he could not help feeling that his de¬ 
jection, concealed as well as he could manage it, 
had a depressing effect on the party. 

As they were finishing their charlotte russe and 
cafe noir, the captain saw an acquaintance, one 
of a group of American officers, several tables 
away from them. 

“There is Major Abercrombie over there,” he 
said, laying down his napkin. “If you will excuse 
me I would like to talk to him a minute or so.” 

As soon as he had left, Cardot leaned across the 
table. 

“So this is the end,” he said abysmally. “Peggy, 
Peggy, how could you do it?” 

“Oh, please don’t, Jules!” she begged in a 
strangled voice. “You are making me feel like 
a criminal. You know how much I loved you—” 

yj 

“And you don’t any longer?” 

“You have no right to ask that, Jules. That’s 
indelicate in you. Besides, you were the one to 
request the breach.” 

“Yes, I did,” he admitted, “but I hoped you 
would understand. I didn’t want to relinquish 
my claims.” 

“I know, Jules, I know,” she answered feel¬ 
ingly. “A woman sometimes has to make a 
change; she can’t always consult her heart. Some¬ 
times we love not wisely, but too well.” 

“You are wrong, dear,” he told her. “One 


158 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


cannot love too well. But I wish you every, 
every happiness. Perhaps, after all, you are doing 
the wise thing,” he added, with a moment’s re¬ 
flection. He stopped himself on the brink of 
extolling her prospect of comfort and security 
as the captain’s wife, realizing the banality of 
such a remark. 

“You believe I still care for you, don’t you?” 
pleaded Consuela with agitation. 

“That’s poor consolation now, Peggy,” he said, 
“unless, unless . . .” He did not finish his 

sentence. She was shaking her head in negation. 

“It is too late now, Jules.” 

“Too late,” he repeated awkwardly. “I am 
sorry.” 

The captain returned to his place and after 
he had paid the score they rose and sauntered to 
the door, where Cardot made his adieux and 
walked dejectedly back to his hotel. 


XXI 


“Five o’clock and clear weather, sir,” muttered 
an orderly, shaking a slumbering figure. Cardot 
jumped to his feet and began to dress rapidly. 
His first morning thoughts were always rhapso¬ 
dies in the consciousness that he was flying on 
the fields of France. Then there invariably fol¬ 
lowed the anti-climax, the mess he had made of 
things in New York, which, like Banquo’s ghost, 
still haunted the feast of his present happiness. 
It was the dead fly which caused the ointment of 
his honor to send forth a stinking savour. And 
invariably he repeated the formula: “I still have 
a healthy conscience.” 

To all this self-reproach had now been added 
the bitter disappointment of Peggy’s engagement, 
a formless but poignant sense of loss which served 
to increase the area of contusion within him. His 
heart was a stone-bruise which became only more 
exquisitely painful with this latest trauma. 

In the next room Gray was singing in a com¬ 
pletely awakened voice, a stuttering song dedi¬ 
cated to a country wench named Katie. 

“Pipe down on that!” cried Cardot, when at the 
tenth inning it was beginning to fray his nerves. 

“Don’t like that song, eh?” said Gray affec¬ 
tionately. “Say, when do we eat?” 

“Pretty quick now, old thing,” replied Cardot 
with energy. “Got to be on our toes, this day, 
because Fritz is on his. Great stuff, eh? We two 
slated for the early morning patrol! Remember 
in ground school how we used to cheer when the 
old training boats went over us, and here we are 


160 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


playing ‘shinny on your own side’ with the 
Boche.” 

“Right-o,” called Gray. “We’ll have to do the 
town after today’s work.” 

They were quartered in a village twelve kilom¬ 
eters back of the lines on the Chateau-Thierry 
front. In a few minutes they had gulped their 
coffee and clambered into the automobile wait¬ 
ing outside. There was no sound of war, and, 
by a strange coincidence, very few signs of it. 
It seemed the somnolent, early-morning village 
of the world over. 

They reach the field as the east is turning a 
hard bluish-gray, suggestive of steel and a grim 
day’s fighting. As yet the guns are all stilled 
and a lark, rising, trills its song with the same 
joy as in the days of peace. 

But what are these ghost-like bulks silently 
taking their places side by side on the misty field? 
For the moment one imagines they are lost souls 
lining up for roll-call. The voices of the mechani¬ 
cians are subdued and their dim figures fit in 
somehow with the unreal, purgatory-like aspect. 
Surely this is not life on the matter-of-fact planet 
of a few years back. 

“Why not make an end today?” whispers a 
voice within Cardot. “There is nothing simpler, 
you know.” “Not a thing stirring,” he answers it 
scornfully. The dialogues between his two selves 
were always conducted in the picturesque lan¬ 
guage of the day, and often he did not hesitate 
to apply terms to himself that he would not 
have cared to have anyone else use. “Whatever 
I am, I haven’t been proven a coward—yet; and 
self-destruction is the lowest form of cowardice. 

. . . So ease up on that suicide stuff.” 

The aviators don their fur-lined shoes and ad- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


161 


just their leather flying hoods. Besides Gray and 
Cardot there are three others, five in this morn¬ 
ing’s patrol, and they are to relieve five others 
who have been doing a tour of duty over the lines. 
The sky has changed from gray to pale blue and 
the east is shot with pink. It is light enough 
to fly. 

Gray has been talking the while about his girl, 
an inexhaustible subject for him, while Cardot has 
been listening politely. Now the deafening roar 
of the motors cuts off the possibility of further 
conversation. The machines are one-man Spads 
in which the aviator is pilot and gunner rolled in 
one. 

The men climb heavily into their seats. The 
mechanician standing before the huge propeller 
asks the question: “Coupe?” meaning “Your 
switch is not on, is it?” and as the aviator answers 
“Coupe,” he turns the propeller over in order to 
gain as much compression as possible. “Con¬ 
tact!” then yells the mechanician. “Contact!” 
answers the pilot. The propeller is again cau¬ 
tiously revolved, the motor starts and in a few 
minutes the plane is soaring skyward. The last 
of the flight of five having taken off and joined 
the others who are wheeling above the field, they 
join in a wedge-shaped formation, after the fashion 
of wild geese, and are off for their voyage over 
the lines. The sky becomes lighter every minute 
and the pilots locate themselves by the contour 
of the country, which lies beneath them like a 
colored map in bas-relief. Here and there are 
patches of woods, as green and delicate as ever; 
the Marne sparkles in the morning light as 
radiantly as in the days of the Roman Caesars. 
Further on huge areas are as pock-marked with 
craters as the face of the moon and as barren and 


162 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


devoid of life, the scars of the grim conflict which 
has been fought and refought over them during 
four sullen years. 

Now the pilots are over the lines, witnessing 
a Titanic struggle staged in miniature below them. 
Far down high explosives are silently bursting, 
gigantic shells tearing into the ulcerated area, but 
the noise of the motors deadens all other sounds; 
they hear little or nothing of the firing. They see 
the columns of black smoke arise as the shells 
explode. White puffballs of shrapnel begin to 
burst near them, but since the gunners have not 
yet found their range, they pay little attention. 
They are this day doing the “ceiling work,” pro¬ 
tecting the observation and range-finding planes 
far beneath them. 

Cardot has been through these experiences 
before and is beginning to regard the life of a 
fighting aviator as a little humdrum after all. 
When the shrapnel begins to burst uncomfort¬ 
ably close, the formation opens out and shifts 
its position in order to get out of range. 

Suddenly the barking of the high explosives 
ceases and the aviators are on the qui vive. There 
is a certain sense of security as long as the shrap¬ 
nel is active; it is like the worrisome bird of the 
rhinoceros that indicates the presence of danger. 
The enemy will not risk jeopardizing their own 
machines when the firing is close. But Cardot 
has not as yet sighted them. Cold chills run 
upward the length of his spine, electrifying his 
hair; his heart is an almost audible thumb against 
his ribs. He chides himself for his fear and dog¬ 
gedly dresses on the plane just ahead of him. 

Then, from out of nowhere, appear five German 
Fokkers manned by a pilot and gunner each; 
they are headed in the direction of the Americans 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


163 


and are undoubtedly determined to open combat. 
Their metallic wings flash ominously in the sun¬ 
light. 

Cardot’s first spasm of fear is succeeded by 
thrills of excitement. He catches a glimpse of 
Gray, who waves exultantly and points to the 
slowly approaching enemy. The impending strug¬ 
gle smacks of the hand-to-hand contest of cham¬ 
pions from each array, as when Goliath called to 
the Israelites: “Choose you a man for you and 
let him come down to me,” and, manned as the 
German ships are, there is much of the inequality 
of that memorable fight. 

The adversaries have grown in size and Cardot 
has grimly selected his plane. There is no time 
for excitement now, his man is in range. He 
pulls the trigger of his Vickers and sends a spray 
of bullets at the pilot, whom he thinks he sees 
crouching behind the windshield. Surely some of 
them will account for him, for Cardot can see 
his tracer bullets falling in a stream into the 
cockpit, but when he looks again the machine is 
banking, turning broadside to him in order to 
give the gunner a better range. 

The formation has broken up and he becomes 
for a moment aware that he is in the center of a 
melee, a “dog-fight” in which the opponents are 
paired, each wheeling, firing, savagely seeking to 
gain an advantage over the other. 

Again he sends a glittering stream in the direc¬ 
tion of the enemy pilot. Disregarding the bul¬ 
lets that are coming his way, tearing through 
the wing fabrics and miraculously missing him, 
he is only keenly disappointed that his opponent 
is proving invulnerable. 

“He’s a damn wooden Hindenburg!” he ex¬ 
claims, mentally picturing the nail-bespattered 


164 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


totems of Berlin. Nach ein mal, and viciously 
he lets fire once more as another fair target pre¬ 
sents itself, oblivious of the fact that the gun¬ 
ner’s piece is pointed square at him. There is a 
sensation of scorching hot water slapping him in 
the face, and a second later another. A scorpion 
crawls up his right leg and stings it to insensi¬ 
bility. 

And now his opponent leaves him suddenly and 
he realizes that when the formation scattered, he 
and his adversary became detached from the 
other fighters. Far off he can descry them still, 
milling for position, wheeling, snarling, biting. 

“I guess I’m done for . . . Back to the lines 
for me, if I can reach them in time.” He found 
that it was difficult for him to turn and head for 
the field. “They must have torn my head up, 
but here I am . . . Business as usual, like the 
Headless Horseman. I give it up . . A 

feeling of languor was stealing over him, his right 
leg was numb. His alter ego said: “This is what 
you were wishing for, wasn’t it?” and he an¬ 
swered: “It suits me.” 

His machine was running stiffly and pound¬ 
ing badly, but he still figured he could make his 
destination. Presently he saw to the left of him 
another detached Spad over which two of the 
Fokkers were wheeling and swooping like hawks 
above their prey. Yes, it was Gray; he saw his 
number on the fuselage. The boy was having a 
hard time, diving, turning, evading his pursuers 
with every aerial trick at his command. Retreat 
seemed cut off. One of the enemy planes Cardot 
saw was the one he had just fought. 

A wave of ardent affection and protective fer¬ 
vor swept over him. Little Gray, clean and spot¬ 
less as the morning light—suppose they should 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


165 


get him! He cursed himself for a poltroon for 
thinking of leaving with Gray fighting for his life, 
yet in his crippled condition his plane was almost 
a ship without a rudder. God, the boy was sig¬ 
nalling for help by a familiar wing tilt they had 
agreed on! 

By a Herculean effort he found himself straight¬ 
ened out and headed toward the scene of this un¬ 
equal contest. He knew it would be difficult 
to manoeuver but he was oblivious of conse¬ 
quences. His idea now was to rush bull-like into 
one of the enemy ships, collide and fall together. 
It was his great opportunity and surely fate would 
not deny him this. 

His steed seemed to be imbued with his own 
spirit and it gathered headway. The hot drops 
began to sting with almost unbearable intensity, 
blinding him for the moment, but he held his 
course. He was forced to disengage a hand to 
wipe his eyes and when he looked again the 
Fokkers were headed toward their lines, while 
Gray’s plane was describing wide circles and 
descending. 

“He has eluded them!” said Cardot, vastly 
relieved and momentarily expecting the boy to 
right his plane and join him. He throttled down 
to watch. But instead of righting itself, the 
machine continued to descend in circles of rapidly 
decreasing radius until it was in a nose dive and 
Cardot knew with dismay that its pilot had been 
killed. He watched transfixed until he saw a pale 
little burst of flame, like the striking of a match, 
which he knew to be the funeral pyre of his friend. 

“Poor little Gray,” he mused sorrowfully. “Of 
course, it couldn’t have^been I instead.” 


XXII 


As Cardot made his way back in a dazed con¬ 
dition, his engine came to a sudden stop and he 
had to make a forced landing. This he made in 
an old wheat-field, coming to earth with a bad 
bump, but he was glad to be on solid ground 
again. Painfully he clambered out of the car and 
tearing off his head-gear and gloves he felt his 
face for evidence of wounds. It was stinging, but 
his hands came away bloodless. 

“That’s funny,” he thought, and limped in front 
of the machine, which straddled the growing grain 
like a gigantic insect ready to take to flight. 
Two or three bullet holes in the radiator ac¬ 
counted for the hot drops which he had imagined 
blood, and also for the sudden stopping of the 
engine, through overheating. 

“Well, anyway, my leg is shot to pieces,” he 
said, accounting for his weakness. Slowly dis¬ 
engaging himself from his flying equipment, he 
found his uniform, in the region of the upper 
right leg, a welter of blood. Below that the bullet 
had ripped the cloth asunder, plowing the surface 
and badly lacerating the entire member. There 
was also a large blood-stain just above his right 
hip. 

He was faint from the loss of blood and half- 
dazed. His sense of direction was gone; still he 
was able to feel a keen pang of disappointment 
that he had not by some heroic coup rescued his 
comrade from his pursuers and taken the count 
himself. Seeing that no stretcher-bearers were 
sent for him, he decided that he must undertake 
166 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


167 


to make his way to the nearest dressing station 
as best he could while consciousness remained. 

For some distance he limped helplessly and 
with excruciating pain over the uneven field. 
Then, tracing the highway by the blasted and 
splintered skeletons of trees, which once gave 
pleasant shade to peaceful wayfarers, he orient¬ 
ed himself. He knew this road, and stumbled 
toward it. Once he fell and lay for a while in a 
pleasant state of coma; in his fancy he could hear 
the early morning song of the lark. 

He would have lain longer had he not been 
goaded by a growing conviction that he could be 
patched up and ready in a few days to avenge the 
death of Gray. 

He picked himself up, finding that the few 
minutes’ respite had increased the difficulty of 
walking, and laboriously dragged himself onward 
to the edge of the road. The face of the early 
afternoon sun was reddened by the dust and 
smoke of battle. First it was blood to his sick¬ 
ened imagination. Then, as he saw the conges¬ 
tion of vehicles and men on the road, the whole 
confusion reminded him of the dusty circus 
grounds of his boyhood days, of the unloading and 
hauling of vans preparatory to the big show. It 
had been an eventful day; the Americans had 
advanced after sharp fighting and were still 
advancing along a six-mile front. 

He virtually fell down the slope to the road 
ten feet below. A steel-helmeted soldier with 
fixed bayonet and full pack regarded him with 
mild surprise. 

“Where is the nearest dressing station?” asked 
the aviator abruptly, his features contorted with 
pain. 

“There’s a first-aid station up this way, sir,” 


168 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


said the soldier, pointing to the front, “and a 
field station half a mile down.” 

“Oh, yes. I know now,” said Cardot dully. 

“Hadn’t you better wait for an ambulance?” 
the other asked solicitously. 

“Perhaps I had,” he agreed. “I guess I’m shot 
up worse than I first thought.” 

An ambulance came by him, but so filled with 
desperately wounded that he saw there was no 
room for him; then another in the same condi¬ 
tion, and he began to realize that these convey¬ 
ances were being taxed to their capacity. 

Gradually he found himself taking an interest in 
the number of wounded men making their way 
to the rear on the other side of the road; they 
were men, wounded in varying degrees, who 
like himself were still able to walk. He did not 
become aware that it was a procession until three 
or four had passed; then others. The stream 
was unending. 

The way of the walking wounded! Some were 
cursing as they limped along; some bore the 
stolid bovine look of injured animals; one lad, 
with a dressing on his head and a bandaged right 
arm held in a scanty sling, walked blithely along, 
whistling. He smiled as Cardot smiled at him 
and saluted with his left hand. 

“I’m going to get a little rest at last,” he called 
cheerily to the lieutenant. 

A pair approached slowly, one pale and anaemic, 
whose face contorted with pain as though each 
step were a fiery ordeal. He was supported by 
the arm of the other about his waist. Though 
this man also wore a gauze bandage about his 
forehead, through which showed an ugly clot of 
blood, he still maintained a calm, beatific ex- 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


169 


terior and a saint-like dignity. Cardot heard him 
talking as they passed. 

“. . . The body is material and is a mental 

concept only, being governed and controlled by 
mortal mind,” he was saying. “Mortal . man, 
though he may not be God himself, is a ray of 
His light. All this misery, sin, sickness, war and 
death, are simply shadows, dark images brought 
on by mortal thought, which flee before the light 
of Truth . . . This is the life eternal . . .” 

A preacher! A Christian science practitioner! 

“I wish I could believe all that,” thought Car- 
dot. “I wish I had his optimism. No, the good 
fellow is deluding himself. It is life all right, but 
not the life eternal.” And then he recalled a pas¬ 
sage from DeQuincey, melancholy companion of 
his lonely college days: 

“ ‘Darkness and formless vacancy for a begin¬ 
ning, or something beyond all beginning; then 
next a dim lotus of human consciousness, finding 
itself afloat upon the bosom of waters without a 
shore; then a few sunny smiles and many tears; 
a little love and infinite strife; whisperings from 
paradise and fierce mockeries from the anarchy 
of chaos; dust and ashes and once more darkness 
circling around .... That is human life, 
that the inevitable amount of man’s laughter and 
his tears—of what he does—of his motions this 
way and that way—’ ” 

He could remember no more; the dust was 
choking him, his mind was confusion and chaos 
itself and he railed at himself for making the 
effort of thinking. Then, as in a dream, he heard 
his name called. He opened his eyes, recognized 
Callahan of his “flight” and he knew no more. 


XXIII 


There is, in the past of most of us, a haven of 
refuge on this earth, not a promised land beyond 
to which the preachers so glowingly refer but 
an accessible retreat in this life wherein, in a few 
days, we can review years of happy childhood 
and spend a little eternity of blissful recollection 
far removed from the pitiless grind of daily life. 

Somewhere there is a kitchen, a hearth, per¬ 
chance a big-bellied stove, which once winked 
jovially through its isinglass partitions as you 
sat with the grown-ups, propping your eyes open 
in order to postpone as long as you could your 
nightly banishment to the downy realms of bed. 
There is horsehair furniture; picture books in 
colors full of ferocious Indians, heroic explorers 
and General Putnam galloping down a stairway, 
over which your uncles mulled before you; there 
is the old clock which ticked thunderously 
through the silent vigil of the night when you 
woke up suddenly, thinking there was someone 
coming up the stairs after you. You listened to 
it intently for a while with senses alert until it 
changed its tune momentarily with something of 
a sigh, and then you snuggled down again into 
your feathery kingdom, only to be wakened by 
the sunshine, the soughing of the wind in the 
old catalpa tree and the bustle of breakfast prep¬ 
arations below. 

And everywhere and always there is the dear, 
kindly, unruffled countenance of her whose heart 
seemed to defy time with the obstinacy of the old 
tree outside. You can see her today—the old- 
170 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 171 


fashioned grandmother of twenty years ago— 
joining in the noisy play of her grandchildren 
with the same spirit as though she were a child 
herself, turning to them always the same sweet, 
angelic smile, no matter how busy she might be 
or what cause for anxiety she might have, as 
though reproof, no matter how gentle, held some¬ 
thing of a sacrilege. Her hands were always busy 
as her heart was full of love, sewing, knitting, 
cooking for her children and the children of her 
children. 

To such a place where hallowed memories 
played as lambently as the golden flame of the 
early fall sunshine, the home of his maternal 
grandmother in Indiana—Cardot returned from 
the blasphemy and desolation of war. His mother 
was visiting a brother on the old place and he 
joined her there. His leg, after long hospital 
treatment, was improving and though he walked 
with a cane he was gradually regaining the use 
of it. 

The transition from the bloodthirstiness of 
battlefields to the kindly, solicitous faces of fam¬ 
ily and friends back home was as vivid as the 
awakening from a horrible dream, and in the sud¬ 
den revulsion of mind he wondered and pondered. 
Here everything was prosperous. The granaries 
everywhere were full and still the ripe grain was 
being cut, even though the workers were few. 
The War had taken its quota from the town and 
its sons were either “Somewhere in France” or 
in camps on this side. So far there had been no 
casualties. Cardot was the first wounded soldier 
these people had seen and as he passed in his 
slow walk along the main street, mothers from 
the outlying farms would stop him and with tears 


172 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


of pride tell him of their sons, and perhaps ex¬ 
hibit a photograph, while the crowd around the 
drug store stove, gathering around it from force 
of habit, for the days were not yet cold, listened 
with awed respect to his first-hand information. 
His was the audience that had listened to the tale 
of the soldier from strange lands for time im¬ 
memorial; he was the universal soldier described 
in Shakespeare's seven ages of man. 

He wondered and pondered—while friends, 
anxious to honor a returning hero, took him for 
long rides through fields gleaming in the face 
of the setting sun and past patches of gay 
Harlequin-clad woodland—whether that fraternal 
era had arrived when rancor, class hatred 
and thirst for vengeance would disappear from 
the minds of men. No, it was too much to hope 
for. The dormant appetite for blood had been 
awakened and could be whetted by those who 
sought to serve their own ends. The power of 
the insidious and hyra-headed monster, propa¬ 
ganda, had been discovered and fair play, so 
characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, had little 
chance against its lying tongues. So far it had 
been directed largely against the Germanic em¬ 
pires, among the Allies, and vice versa among 
the Germans, but, like firearms, it was a weapon 
which the War had made familiar and anon would 
be dangerous in the hands of its possessor. 

Then Armistice Day came, with its spontaneous 
rejoicing all over the world, and the War was 
over. Cardot’s leg continuing to improve, he re¬ 
turned to New York City. Here, inactivity hung 
on him like a pall. He had lost the knack for 
working. Everything in life appeared to his eyes 
to be so blase, so played out. On every hand 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 173 


there was disillusionment. None of the miracles 
of miracles had come to pass—the dead had not 
awakened, nor had the new Messiah put in ap¬ 
pearance. There was still marriage and giving in 
marriage; divorce and the securing of divorce; 
there were births, deaths, profiteering and bank¬ 
ruptcy. The warrior ants that had moved so 
fiercely and blindly against each other, were 
groping in a dazed way for material with which 
to rebuild their ruined homes. In spite of the 
manifold predictions to the contrary the fabric 
of humanity seemed to have undergone no violent 
changes. 

Someone had stuck a pin in the patriotism of 
the flag-waving and four-minute speaking days, 
and it had collapsed in a much shorter time than 
it had taken to inflate it. “The War is over!” 
had been the exultant cry of Armistice Day. “The 
War is over; now let us honor our home-coming 
heroes!” “The War is over!” was repeated with 
the effervescent enthusiasm of sentimentalists 
until it became stale and flat. “The War is 
over,” they said, turning to their desks, “and we 
should worry!” 

The first troops to return had received a 
glorious ovation. Cardot did not attempt to find 
a place on Fifth Avenue when the New York 
troops paraded. The crowds started to gather 
the afternoon before and many spent the entire 
night on the street in order to hold their places, 
while the itinerant hot-dog and sandwich man 
ministered to their wants. Every window, every 
roof, was crowded, and finally, as the long line of 
olive drabs swung proudly down the street, the 
spectators had cheered themselves hoarse, show¬ 
ering their heroes with improvised white paper 
confetti, candy and even money. 


174 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Then other divisions came, and still others, and 
space on the sidewalk was no longer at a pre¬ 
mium. A few ardent patriots were always on 
hand, cheering vociferously in a considerate at¬ 
tempt to make up with volume of sound for 
lack of spectators, but the effect was only ludi¬ 
crous. People had other things to do than to 
watch a long, monotonous parade. Such spec¬ 
tacles failed to interest them any longer; there 
was not enough variety of color. Moreover, with 
the bulk of the home boys back, why should they 
concern themselves with those of other states, or 
sections? A welcoming tug carrying a delega¬ 
tion to meet some of the returning soldiers of 
Pennsylvania, hailed a transport: “Are those the 
Pennsylvania troops?” “Naw,” came a voice, 
“we’re from New Joisey!” and the tug turned 
back without a toot. 

The country had had its fill of soldiers; the 
glamour and romance of it all were gone. War- 
scarred heroes were peddling pencils on the 
streets. Fly-by-night concerns were exploiting 
the uniform and outfitting its wearers with catch¬ 
penny devices that made beggars of them. Thou¬ 
sands upon thousands of men were demobilized 
in New York City, where they spent the money 
given to take them home and were then thrown 
upon the charity of the community. Many a 
soldier, decorated for bravery on the fields of 
France, had pawned his Croix de Guerre for a 
pittance with which to buy him some food. 

Everywhere there was lack of vision and fore¬ 
sight, divided responsibility and wasted effort on 
the part of those charged with the repatriation 
and rehabilitation of veterans. Months passed and 
the country was filled, in increasing numbers, with 
penniless, afflicted, disabled, disheartened soldiers, 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


175 


who had returned to their country to find their 
jobs pre-empted, and themselves unable to find 
work of any kind; or, if unfitted for work, objects 
of public and private charity. Hospital facilities 
for the wounded were disgracefully inadequate 
and untold numbers died for lack of prompt or 
efficient attention, virtually abandoned by the 
country they served. 

Out of this welter the American Legion, the 
service man’s organization of America, imbued 
with the loftiest ideals for which the United 
States has always been sponsor, and adding to 
them a chaste militarism, was coming into prom¬ 
inence, making its voice heard. Now it was beg¬ 
ging, pleading, memoralizing for a square deal 
for the wounded buddies. It sought in vain for 
a means of untangling the plethoric skein of red 
tape which surrounded the government agencies 
dealing with the problem. The disabled were on 
the defensive against the government, just as 
those that were still fit were on the defensive in 
securing and holding jobs in civil life, pitted in 
remorseless competition against men who had not 
been in the service. 

Cardot, at first, was prone to minimize these 
difficulties, feeling that the government bureaus 
charged with the rehabilitation of veterans were 
only slow in getting under way, but as the “cases” 
multiplied at Washington and men died on the 
way and even in the ante-rooms of the bureaus 
while seeking, beseeching assistance, he stroked 
his chin and admitted that something after all 
was wrong. 

There began to grow on him a desire to be of 
help to these men, to consecrate himself to lessen¬ 
ing the burdens of the blind, the halt and the 
gassed. He felt it as an opportunity, a chance 


176 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


handed him from Heaven to make himself whole 
again, and he thanked the Lord for it. His re¬ 
sources were slender, but he could augment them 
in some way. Money matters had always seemed 
to solve themselves in some mysterious manner; 
he would borrow, skimp, and work at nights or 
odd times. 

His start was made on the East Side. He 
secured the names and addresses of some dozen 
or more men who were not being taken care of in 
the government hospitals and then transferred his 
baggage from his respectable little down-town 
hotel to a dingy room on Lexington Avenue, 
where he might save on rent and overhead. 

His first visit was paid to the home of Oscar 
Hartmann on Fiftieth Street below Second Ave¬ 
nue. It was a dreary-faced tenement building, and 
three flights up, but finally he was rapping at 
the door while squalid, pasty-faced children 
stopped their solemn play in the hall to watch 
him. The door was opened by a hard-visaged, 
eagle-eyed woman, whose looks demanded the 
purpose of his visit. Cardot was temporarily 
taken aback. He was at a loss as to how to 
proceed; in fact, he had hardly contemplated 
working amidst such drab surroundings. 

“Does Oscar Hartmann live here?” he asked. 

“Ya, he live here. You vant to see him?” the 
woman answered. 

“If you please.” 

She conducted him into a disordered room, with 
a dirty rag rug on the floor, furnished with a 
few broken pieces of furniture. From an adjoin¬ 
ing room came a sickening smell of boiling 
clothes. In one corner beside a bleary window 
sat Oscar Hartmann, black-haired, yellow-visaged, 
scowling. He seemed a classic reproduction of the 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 177 

spirit of Lenine and Trotzky. His right leg was 
missing. 

“My name is Cardot,” said the philanthropist, 
advancing. Even as he spoke he was aware of a 
sort of unconscious superiority which he had 
promised himself to try to avoid. 

“Well, mine is Hartmann,” said the other 
shortly. 

“I came to see if I couldn’t do something for 
you in some way.” 

“You’re not a government man, are you?” 
challenged the other. 

“No.” 

“I was goin’ to say if you was, you could 
politely step to hell—you and your government, 
too.” 

He sniffed angrily and sat back in his chair, 
drawing a tattered shawl more closely about him. 
Cardot gained a first inkling of what his work 
really meant; it could not be simply the gratuitous 
distribution of alms. He saw that he would have 
to use a great deal of tact and delicacy in making 
friends with this man and in reconciling him to 
life, if indeed he were ever to obtain any measure 
of success. 

“No,” he began, explaining rather awkwardly, 
“I’m not representing any organization. I’m 
just a buddy like you and I’m out on my own 
hook, seeing what I can do for you fellows.” 

Hartmann was silent. Cardot drew up a rickety 
chair near him. 

“You seem to have had a run of hard luck, all 
right,” he continued. “Now if there is any way 
that I can help, anything I can do . . .” 

“There ain’t nothin’ you can do,” said Hart¬ 
mann finally. “The guys in Washington could 
uv, but it’s too late, damn ’em. I lost my leg 


178 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


and got t. b. over there and what do I get for 
it—a little pittance of money that I had to beg 
and scrape for, and then they cut that in two, 
and now they’ve cut me out entirely. Yet I’m 
rated as ‘totally and permanently disabled.’ That’s 
a hell of a joke, ain’t it? Put you on the list and 
then don’t give you a red. Me for the Kaiser’s 
army next time, you bet!” 

“Well, have you written?” asked Cardot, trying 
to find some way in which he could start a more 
optimistic trend of thought in the man. 

“Written! Christ, yes. All I’m going to,” 
said Hartmann bitterly. “There was a fellow on 
the floor below wrote, too, but here I am yet. 
I’m damned if I think I’d take their money now. 
I ain’t good for many more days.” 

“Oh, it isn’t as bad as all that,” said Cardot 
hopefully. “We’ll get the matter of your pay 
straightened out somehow and things will look 
more cheerful.” 

Here the invalid was racked with coughing and 
Cardot had to sit uncomfortably in the closed 
room until he was through. There had always 
been something leprous about consumption that 
revolted him, yet this was what he must expect 
to come across very frequently in his mission. 
Here was the seamy side not only of heroism, 
but of the big, gilded city. Like a whited 
sepulchre it was filled with the uncleanness of 
the white plague. 

Being assured that there was nothing further 
he could do on that day, he left, resolving to 
inform one of the posts of the American Legion, 
the Red Cross, or some other organization that 
might be able to give active and prompt aid. He 
informed both of them that afternoon and then 
set out to find work for himself. This he found 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


179 


as stenographer with a firm of importers to which 
he had entree and recommendation, and he so 
arranged matters that he could commence his 
duties there late in the afternoon and work well 
into the evening, thus giving him the first part 
of the day for the work to which he had begun 
to devote himself. True, his salary was not large, 
but he figured that it would be enough to main¬ 
tain him, if he lived sparingly, and his position 
would keep him in touch with some men of means 
whom he hoped to interest in his charity from 
time to time. It hurt him to think that charity 
should be necessary. 

The following day he called at the Public 
Health Service hospital, containing over two hun¬ 
dred and fifty patients, with adequate accommo¬ 
dations for about one hundred and fifty. He 
talked with a number of the boys; sent out and 
obtained cigarettes for some of them, learned the 
desires for particular magazines of others, and 
left with the satisfaction that he was making 
progress. In the afternoon he reported for work 
and applied himself intensely to it until eight 
o'clock. When he left he was radiating with 
happiness. It had been a day full of blessedness. 
He had been shown the way back to self-respect. 


XXIV 


Returning to visit Hartmann a week later, Car- 
dot knocked repeatedly but there was no answer. 
Finally as he turned to go a man came up a few 
steps from the lower floor. 

“There ain’t anybody there,” he said. 

“I just came to inquire about Hartmann. Do 
you know how he’s getting along?” 

“He died,” answered the other shortly. “Died 
three days ago.” 

“Is that so?” exclaimed Cardot inadequately. 
“I’m awfully sorry to hear it.” 

“Yes, he died damning and God-damning the 
United States. I had been writing the Bureau of 
War Risk Insurance for him, trying to get some 
of his pay. He was taken with a bad spell last 
week and when we saw he was going to pass 
out I wired them to send some money so as to 
pay funeral expenses, but so far I haven’t heard 
from them. We took up a contribution to help 
bury him and so that’s the end of the poor guy. 
He was a good soldier, I’ve been told, even 
though his people were German. The old woman 
has moved out.” 

He turned to go back to his room and Jules 
went slowly down into the street, feeling his 
smallness, his incapacity, very keenly. Having 
chanced on this case, the first in his new career, 
he mentally multiplied it by thousands. His ef¬ 
forts were so dwarfed that he felt as if it were too 
colossal a task to continue. There was a tempta¬ 
tion to go on with the throngs in the street, who 
seemed to be concerned with their own interests, 
180 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


181 


and let the matter rest with the government; 
after all, it was the government’s responsibility. 

But the next day his apathy and disappoint¬ 
ment had passed. Disappointed though he had 
been and feeling almost guilty of neglect himself, 
inasmuch as he was a citizen of the government 
charged with the care of these disabled men, he 
rose early, resolved to redouble his efforts so as 
to make them count more, to put in more hours. 
Formerly charity had appealed to him as a sort 
of semi-profession practiced by people who had 
more time and means on their hands than they 
knew what to do with, as much for the purpose 
of exalting their ego or salving a bad conscience, 
as for any other, but now he regarded it as 
detached from himself or any comfort he might 
draw from being engaged in it. It was a para¬ 
mount duty and a work to which he was called. 

He began to enlist the help of others, not plead¬ 
ing but using his own personality to obtain re¬ 
sults. He secured outings for the boys from 
other men in the Legion, from his employers, 
from anyone he might interest. One evening he 
chanced to go into a motion picture show on 
lower Sixth Avenue. A stout woman sitting be¬ 
side him began to talk in a friendly way about 
the film before them—a scene from Ireland. It 
turned out that she was a cook for a large menage 
on Park Avenue that maintained a retinue of 
servants. 

“It’s thim British devils that’s causin’ all the 
woe of this world. It was Queen Victoria her¬ 
self that caused the ships to be sunk that was 
carryin’ supplies to the starvin’ Irish.” 

Cardot listened patiently while she garrulously 
rehearsed an accumulation of misinformation and 
vented her spleen on the misunderstood English. 


182 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


But while she was talking he was concocting a 
plan. Her Majesty, the cook, could assist him. 

When the picture was over he accompanied her 
to the establishment and was invited to the ser¬ 
vants’ quarters, where he was formally intro¬ 
duced to a gathering that was holding forth 
merrily on cake, wine and other refreshments that 
had been sent down for their entertainment from 
a party in progress above them. He made himself 
at home, played rummy and chatted with them, 
almost disabusing his mind of old, ingrown preju¬ 
dices against the menial classes. Jane McCul¬ 
lough, a pretty, blue-eyed Scotch maid, attracted 
him; there was a hint of the Gaelic tongue in her 
speech; there was the wistfulness of the heath 
in her eyes. They exchanged confidences and 
he asked when he left if he might call again. 

The net result of this subterranean connection 
with the aristocratic and awe-inspiring establish¬ 
ment on Park Avenue was a generous supply of 
smuggled dainties, mostly pastries and cakes, 
which he and Jane distributed at the hospital on 
one of her afternoons off. The beaming faces 
and expressions of gratitude bestowed on them 
more than repaid for their trouble. And Cardot 
felt that he had discovered a supply depot on 
which he could call again. 

So through the sultry summer Jules continued 
the strenuous program he had started. The list 
of neglected veterans was lengthening but he en¬ 
deavored to do only his nearest duty. He found 
that he did not accomplish much by endeavoring 
to interest other organizations or people, that 
much valuable time was lost thereby and it was 
hard to check up on results, so he contented him¬ 
self with doing what he could with the individual 
cases he took up. In most instances he followed 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


183 


the suggestions elicited from those he desired 
to assist. He was scrivener, fiscal agent, wheel¬ 
chair attendant, reader, entertainer. 

He was overdoing, taxing his vitality to its 
extreme limits, and it began to tell. It was be¬ 
coming increasingly difficult to rise early in the 
morning and his feet became more sluggish as 
they turned toward the office with its day’s work 
crowded into the afternoon and evening hours, 
but he hung on tenaciously. There were more 
and more demands on the little money he was 
earning. He had eliminated smoking and all 
luxuries and was selecting in his meals only eat¬ 
ables richest in food value. Calories and pro¬ 
teins—words which had hitherto meant very little 
to him—became synonymous with economy. 


XXV 


It was the month of May again. The winter, 
although it had not been severe, had been full of 
suffering for the derelicts of the War. With the 
coming of spring Cardot had hoped that his 
vitality would return, but instead it continued to 
ebb like the current of an electric battery that 
has been short-circuited, delivering only a portion 
of its energy to the parts for which it is intended. 
Many a night he thought he could go no further, 
that the end had come and he must halt, only to 
rise the following morning and goad himself to 
the work before him, which seemed to be in¬ 
creasing in geometrical progression. 

Yet he continually remembered how abundant¬ 
ly he was being repaid, how kindly fate had 
treated him, and that he had been brought from 
a slough of misery to this state of mental serenity. 
In his work he felt that he was gradually making 
himself whole again; he allowed his fancies free 
play as to Consuela. It buoyed him up consider¬ 
ably to think of her as still waiting for him. He 
would not permit the negative idea to linger in his 
mind. The War was over, the spring had 
brought its flowers; why should it not also bring 
Consuela? He wondered where she was, whether 
she, too, had returned from France. Was she the 
bride of the domineering medical officer by this 
time? His hopes fell temporarily and then rose 
again as he remembered that no news was good 
news; such a disaster, he felt, would have been 
flashed to him telepathically. 

One Sunday afternoon a friend volunteered 
184 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


185 


to take him and three of his badly wounded 
charges for a motor ride. They passed along 
Riverside Drive, admiring the long array of one 
of the fleets that had just returned from overseas 
duty. Like dogs, the great ships seemed to lie 
panting in a kindlier mood, with an air of satis¬ 
faction over a service well performed. The pleas¬ 
ant weather had brought out numbers of sight¬ 
seers. 

Presently they were approaching the apartment 
in which Mrs. Claiborne lived. He had passed it 
before, not without a certain feeling of dread and 
self-reproach for his lack of chivalry. He owed 
her a visit, perhaps a tender word. He could 
trust himself now; he was not seeing life so com¬ 
pletely with his senses. The War-madness over, 
clarity of vision and comprehension had returned, 
and though he reflected with sorrow that he had 
done both himself and her irreparable injury, still 
the heaven and the stars above the material world 
were no longer completely obliterated. Her friend¬ 
ship had not been shallowly rooted, had not been 
lightly bestowed, and he saw again with clearer 
light the enormous sacrifice which his companion¬ 
ship had entailed. Yes, he admitted, he would 
always remember and cherish the memory of her 
friendship. The oft-quoted but beautiful lines 
occurred to him: “You may break, you may shat¬ 
ter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses 
will linger there still.” 

And then his pulse quickened. She was sitting 
on the grassy parkway while a few feet away sat 
a man, gazing complacently up the river, whom 
he knew to be her husband. Between them a 
child was crawling—his child! She looked up 
startled, as though quick instinct warned of his 
presence, and flashed her recognition while the 


186 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


machine was still some hundred feet off. Then 
she flushed hotly and her eyes sought the ground. 
She raised her head again and, as he passed quite 
close to her, her smile of sweetly-sad humility 
told him all. He smiled in return and lifted his 
hat. It was then he noted that a sleeve of her 
husband’s coat was armless. 


The spring wore into summer and to the prob¬ 
lem of the disabled was added that of the ex- 
service men, men who had returned to find their 
jobs pre-empted by those who had stayed behind. 
Some, when they applied for their old positions, 
found themselves faced patronizingly by the for¬ 
mer office boy, across the desk which they had 
occupied when they enlisted. Others found svelte 
young women, with a smug stand-in with the 
boss, doing their work, while still others who 
had been given work were discharged when it 
slackened up a bit, under operation of the prin¬ 
ciple of “last hired, first fired.” 

Their savings and resources, if indeed they 
had any before the war, disappeared and they 
were early without funds when the inevitable 
period of industrial depression, following the re¬ 
turn to a peacetime basis, set in. They inhabited 
the park benches, many spending their nights 
there. They formed bread-lines of increasing 
lengths. A show of hands and careful question¬ 
ing by Legion workers of the longest queues of 
men in various parts of the city, waiting either 
for work or food, showed that the great majority 
of them were ex-service men. They were tempted 
into evil, some of them, though even the most 
lawless had learned in the ranks, or on board 
ship, what order and decency and discipline 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 187 


meant; and then a pernicious slander went forth 
that the returned soldiers were largely responsible 
for the wave of crime. The works of hardened 
and experienced criminals were being attributed 
wholly to them, to men who with the greatest 
spontaneity in history had offered themselves for 
service in a strange land to ward off danger 
still remote to their country! 

The organizations of ex-service men were 
allowed to bury their dead without hindrance and 
without help from the outside, except perhaps 
the immediate family. As the caskets containing 
the remains of those who had died on the other 
side were shipped to the United States to be laid 
in their final resting places, their comrades con¬ 
ducted the last rites, and in most cases constituted 
novelty of the first arrivals, assumed the attitude 
of “Oh-it’s-just-another-military-funeral,” and paid 
scant attention. 

It all amazed Cardot, this apathetic reaction 
of the emotional American, and he was forced to 
the conclusion that though this was not a “thin 
red line of ’eroes,” but the flower of a nation 
demobilized, the soldier was still the soldier of 
whom Kipling wrote: 

“It’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, 
the brute!’ 

But it’s ‘Saviour of ’is country,’ when the Guns begin 
to shoot.” 

So Cardot had plenty of work in the field he 
had chosen. Occasionally the savour of the flesh- 
pots reached his nostrils; especially when he 
realized what an infinitesimal amount of good his 
labor had accomplished, his strained nerves cried 


188 THE WALKING WOUNDED 

| <■ 

out for rest and decent food and less depressing 
surroundings, but he held on doggedly, cursing 
his weakness and the insomnia which now haunted 
his bedroom, as something which if spoken to 
with sufficient asperity might leave him. 


XXVI 


Consuela vowed, with all the earnestness of the 
men who swore they would murder the bugler, 
that if ever she were returned alive to her native 
heath she would roam no more. Her adventurous 
spirit had been sated for the nonce and she felt 
that she had seen far too much for her own good 
of the terror and pain of war. She had worked 
hard and the Armistice did not come any too soon 
for her. 

She returned to Florida and for a while, a long 
while at that, it did not seem as though she would 
ever become weary of the old house and the fam¬ 
iliar scenes, of the white strand of the seashore, 
of the wholesomeness of the pines, of the hibiscus 
and oleanders and guavas in the yard, or the holy¬ 
stoned appearance of the white pine floor of the 
kitchen, with its shining pans and grumbling 
Pinkie, the negro woman with the misery in the 
chest, who could be so easily tempted to laughter. 

Winter, glorious and flashing, came with its 
gifts of golden fruit and its Chautauqua of light¬ 
hearted birds, and she was content to sit in the 
sunshine of the front porch, with her books or in 
company with her father, and watch this sylvan 
pageant of peace; or to review it on the back of 
her grey nag, Zephyr, who was as comfortable a 
companion as anyone could wish and as gentle 
and mild as her name. All of the old places, 
however, seemed to speak softly of Cardot and 
to reprove her for duplicity to herself. On the 
beach she found the exact spot where he had 
inscribed her name in the sand. She even im- 
189 


190 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


agined she saw a trace of it yet, but it proved 
to be a black, water-soaked twig beneath. 

When she called on the hermits, Uncle Eben 
looked up from his sloop-building with a genuine 
and whole-hearted welcome in his eyes and voice. 

“Well, well, lass, we’re glad to have you back 
with us. We’ve missed you sore, like the apple- 
blossoms of the old State.” 

“I’m glad to be back, I can assure you. And 
how have you and Uncle John been looking after 
yourselves? You are looking the same as ever. 
You have ceased to grow older, haven’t you?” 

“Yes, we run along in the same old groove and 
one day is like another, we don’t notice the flight 
of time. But you have seen some sights, I’ll 
warrant.” 

She had cast her eyes about the shack. In the 
next room she could see the bunk that her ship¬ 
wrecked lover had occupied. 

“Sit down, Miss,” Uncle Eben drew up a box, 
“and talk to me while I rig this man-o’-war. You 
know a visit like this is an event in an old man’s 
life; there ain’t many people pay much attention 
to the likes of us.” 

He returned to his side of the table and Con- 
suela took the proffered seat. 

“And our boy, you haven’t seen him lately, 
have you?” asked the old man, again bending over 
his work. 

“Yes, I met him on the streets of Paris. He 
was an aviator, you know.” 

“And you met him in Paris, eh, and that just 
by chance? Well, well.” With bent head he went 
on quietly whittling a piece of soft white pine, 
which presently he began to fit in the orlop of 
his ship. Consuela watched him interestedly. 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


191 


“But you haven’t heard from him since, I mean? 
Since he came back?” 

“No, I haven’t,” blankly, “I really don’t know 
where he is.” 

“I have,” said the old man proudly, still ad¬ 
dressing himself to his work. “He didn’t forgit 
his old friends. Did ye know he was wounded?” 

Consuela drew her breath sharply. 

“No!” she exclaimed. “Was it serious? Is he 
recovering?” 

“He was hurt right badly, as well as I can make 
out, but he didn’t say much about it in his last 
letter, only that he was getting along pretty well.” 

Consuela decided that the old man held valuable 
information, but she did not want to appear too 
eager. She spoke soothingly to her heart as she 
would to a galloping horse; she had cancelled her 
first arrangement and made her second bargain, 
and the latter was the one she would stick to. So 
Cardot must be relegated to the limbo of the 
fleeting attachments she had made at one time 
or another. 

But she could not entirely repress her interest. 

“And where is he now, Uncle Eben?” she asked. 

“New York City,” answered the old man. 
“Wouldn’t you like to read his last letter? It 
seems he is doing some work among the wounded 
boys up there. Let me get it for you.” 

“Oh, don’t go to the trouble, Uncle Eben,” 
protested Consuela, coloring. 

“It’s no trouble at all,” he replied rising. From 
a shelf where he had carefully put it away Uncle 
Eben brought the envelope and handed it to her. 
It bore on the outside the postmark of the Grand 
Central Station, New York. She started at the 
familiar hand. 

On extracting the letter she read suffering in 


192 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


the writing, it was uneven and seemed to have a 
fine quiver to it that she had never noted before. 

“Dear Uncle Eben,” the letter ran, “I just re¬ 
ceived your letter and, as always, was glad to 
hear from you. I really don’t see how you find 
so much to write about, living in the isolation 
that you do. But there is, after all, a happiness 
in solitary life that one doesn’t find in the cities 
of men. You with your ships to keep you busy 
and the sea to throw you in a living, as well as 
furnish you food for reflection in its ever-chang¬ 
ing moods, are like the prisoner that has become 
so attached to his prison cell that when he is 
released he tries to break into jail again. 

“Well, you do your work and I do mine. Mine 
is in another sphere, one in which men die cursing, 
as they did on the other side, a world of lungless, 
legless and otherwise disabled men who ought to 
be spending their days in some comfort, inasmuch 
as they gave all for their country. But that’s 
another story. The trouble is, I’m about all 
in myself. I need rest, mostly, but that condition 
will pass; I feel sure of it. 

“I think I told you something of this before, 
but if it hadn’t been for my weakness, my lack 
of appreciation of what a brave, decent woman 
means to a man, I would have had a real help¬ 
meet, and someone to love. Yes, I mean it. 
You old codgers have forgotten what the word 
means, or at least say you have, but it is still a 
very present need with me, and I have to seek it 
out before I become too embittered with life. 
I have sinned and suffered, and I am still suffer¬ 
ing, but my punishment seems light in view of 
what I did. I’ll never trifle with my conscience 
again. 

“So much for that! I make you my father 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


193 


confessor, because I don’t know of anyone else 
who would stand for it. Some of these days I’ll 
be down your way, and look you up, perhaps. 
I would like to see that model of the clipper you 
are building. You must have done considerable 
studying to perfect your plans of it. 

“My best wishes to you and Uncle John. As 
ever, Jules Cardot.” 

She noted the address and inserting the letter 
in the envelope, returned it without comment to 
Uncle Eben. 

“A good lad, that,” said the old man, casting 
an inquiring look at her as he returned from re¬ 
placing the letter to the exact spot from which he 
had taken it, “sincere and tender-hearted.” 

“I know it,” she replied noncommittally. “I 
am certainly sorry to hear he had been wounded, 
but he seems to have recovered. Please remem¬ 
ber me when you write. We are the best of 
friends, you know.” 

“I thought you was,” declared Uncle Eben, 
again seating himself at the table, and then with 
the frankness of age, “I was in hopes you would 
marry him.” 

“Why, Uncle Eben,” she reproved, blushing, 
“you are getting to be a regular matchmaker! 
Since you appear to be in on the secret, we were 
engaged, but you see what he says: it is all his 
fault that it has been broken off; in fact, he did it 
himself. And now I am engaged to someone 
else.” 

“And do you love that ‘someone’?” 

“Well enough to marry him. Besides, there’s 
more to him than there is to Jules; he’s more 
dependable, steadier.” She was advancing the 
arguments through which she had almost con- 


194 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


vinced herself that she was taking the right 
course. 

“I don’t understand the young folks of today,” 
said Uncle Eben slowly. “In my day we used 
to think of love enduring forever. But for my 
sake, little girl, don’t make the mistake of marry¬ 
ing without love, thinking that it will come after 
marriage. Don’t do it. With all the knowledge 
and science and new-fangled ideas of today, love 
is still at the bottom of happiness.” 

It was quite a speech for him and he began 
whittling assiduously, leaving Consuela stricken 
with surprise. The world, even in his seclusion, 
had not gone entirely over his head. There was 
something oracular in his words, coming as they 
did out of this place of retirement. 

In February came Doctor Duane for hunting. 
Consuela met him at the station and brought 
him and his trappings triumphantly to the cot¬ 
tage. She thought she noticed a little shock of 
disappointment at the lack of splendor and pre¬ 
tense of the house in which his fiancee lived, but 
he apparently recovered quickly and spoke approv¬ 
ingly of the homelike appearance of the place. 
He was urbane and professional in his manner 
and hinted of a lucrative practice in the city. And 
where he hinted, his clothes and outfitting pro¬ 
claimed aloud. He had the best rifle the market 
could afford and a shining rod and reel with a 
book of flies to fascinate the eye of every known 
species of fish. Yet when Mr. Childers took him 
into a cypress bayhead a few miles distant, the 
headwaters of a little river flowing into the Hali¬ 
fax, the black bass, or trout as they are known 
in Florida, displayed their conservative affection 
for a shiny “meat-skin” bait and wrought-iron 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


195 


hook at the end of a bamboo pole, and it was 
Mr. Childers who caught the string. 

He had brought his bag of golf sticks along 
and Consuela drove him into town on several 
occasions that he might go the rounds of the 
hotel course. 

He was deferential and well-informed so that 
Dan Childers began to like him immensely, lis¬ 
tening to his discourse on the affairs of the world 
outside with the respect of the true woodsman 
for salient facts and figures, but Consuela found 
him just a little difficult. She could not disabuse 
her mind of a fancy that he was continually laugh¬ 
ing up his sleeve at her and her artless ways; 
that his preference must be for exotic women 
who could be tantalizingly experienced, while she 
must remain a modest woods-violet in his eyes. 
This thought gave her considerable worry—such 
a man would inevitably make a doll’s house of his 
home, and Peggy would never make a second 
Norah. 

Yet he was an irresistible lover and the date 
of the wedding was fixed for June. With the con¬ 
fidence of the young woman in her power to re¬ 
form, tame or transform the nature of the man she 
expects to marry, an illusion which has followed 
her down the ages, Consuela promised herself a 
victory over him when she should go to New York 
in April to shop and choose her trousseau. Then 
she would burgeon out and show herself the 
sophisticated city woman of the times; she would 
discard what he evidently chose to regard as 
bucolic ingenuousness with her simple frocks, and 
assume complexity with smarter clothes. It had 
been done hundreds of times—in the movies. 


XXVI 


A sharp pebble grinding through the paper-thin¬ 
ness of the sole of Cardot’s shoe threw him into 
serious contemplation of the future and what it 
contained for him. He was at the end of his 
rope, both as to finances and physical strength. 
As he looked back over the struggling of the past 
month, he marvelled at the tenacity of his will 
power and the nervous energy which alone had 
carried him forward. But this day he decided it 
would not be fair to overtax himself any further; 
he must grant himself an indefinite leave of 
absence and return home. As a further argument 
the old wounds had cast their ballot in favor of 
this move; the scars were protesting with sharp 
twinges of pain. 

He must take Bennie Collins out in his wheel¬ 
chair to see the beauty of spring in Central Park, 
and then he was through. Bennie, with a leg and 
three fingers of his right hand gone, gassed and 
sick, had looked forward to this outing for 
a week; together they had planned it with all the 
details of a campaign. He wanted to go on 
Sunday morning, he wanted to see the animals, 
he wanted to watch the people in their holiday 
clothes, and Jules could not find the heart to deny 
him. 

The following morning, with the assistance of 
two of the men on Bennie’s tenement floor, Bennie 
and his chair were carried down the three flights 
of stairs to the street and Cardot started on his 
tour. 

“Pm about S. O. L. myself, Bennie,” he con- 
196 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 


197 


fessed when they were under way. “I’m going 
home next week. Back to old Florida for me!” 

“Florida! They say that’s some nifty dump. 
Wish I could go along,” said the boy wistfully. 

“Wish you could, too, Ben. What you want 
to do is to get well. Get some of this vocational 
training that’s being passed around and come 
down and get a job.” 

“I’m going to do that thing. You send those 
fellows around to see me. Some of these days 
I’ll have enough money to buy a tin leg with, and 
then it’ll be ‘look out, girls!’ ” 

The hopefulness and patience of Bennie had 
been an affecting thing. He hugged his little 
option on life with the fervor with which a child 
clings to a rag doll. 

They had traversed the park, “done” the Zoo, 
sat and rested awhile and watched the people, and 
Cardot was tired out and moody while Benny was 
contented and jubilant. 

“We’ve had a great mornin’, haven’t we?” he 
kept repeating. “Great stuff, this fresh air. I 
ain’t going to fergit you soon for this, old scout.” 

About eleven o’clock they started back across 
the park, eastward toward Fifth Avenue, Cardot 
pushing the chair briskly in order to end his mis¬ 
sion. He was occupied with gloomy thoughts 
when suddenly two figures on horseback appeared 
from behind a hedge. The chair was directly 
across the bridle path and the riders were forced 
to rein up their horses suddenly in order to avoid 
an encounter. Cardot, with an exclamation, 
pulled the chair out of the way and at the same 
time recognized the couple. It was Consuela and 
Duane, both dressed in conventional riding habit. 

The incident occupied only a few seconds. 


198 THE WALKING WOUNDED 


Duane scowled, called savagely: “Why don’t 
you use a little care in crossing here?” and flicked 
his horse with his whip. Across the road Con- 
suela looked back, bewildered, as though not sure 
whom she had seen. 

“Damn ’em,” said Bennie angrily. “Them 
swells didn’t miss us far.” 

Jules, too, was thoroughly angry, both at Duane 
and himself. Why, he asked himself hotly, had 
he not blocked the way and taken his sweet time 
in moving? His fist doubled involuntarily as he 
felt a wild desire to break it on the point of the 
other’s jaw. He was angry at himself for the 
sorry figure he must have made in Consuela’s 
eyes. Here was certainly an anticlimax to all the 
months of hard work he had put in, trying to 
alleviate the suffering of others. 

He saw Bennie to his room and left him as soon 
as possible, his blood still boiling. Back in his 
own dingy lodging he flung himself on his sway- 
backed iron bed, with its thin mattress, and gazed 
at the ceiling where the dust hung in little rolls 
and a spider in one of the corners squatted motion¬ 
less before the stale remains of a fly. The squalor 
of his surroundings served only to incense him 
the more. 

The next day Jules severed his connections in 
the city, planning to leave for the South by the 
early afternoon train. After paying his rent, he 
found that he had just enough, with the exercise 
of frugality, to reach home. But he breathed a 
sigh of relief; the long vacation had begun. 

He had just stepped down the iron-railed steps, 
suit-case in hand, when he heard his name called 
and Consuela, having rounded the corner, came 
running to him. 

“I thought I never would find your address,” 


THE WALKING WOUNDED 199 


she said, breathlessly. He regarded her with 
open-mouthed astonishment. 

“But, Peggy,” he exclaimed, sensing that she 
bore a message of importance to him, “how did 
you know it at all? who told you? I can hardly 
believe my eyes. You’ll have to pinch me to 
make me sure I’m awake.” 

The flesh of his arm was promptly pressed be¬ 
tween her thumb and forefinger. 

“I’m reassured,” he laughed, “but what errand 
brings you here ? A few minutes more and I 
would have been on my way. I’m going home.” 

“Don’t be too hasty, young man,” she checked 
him archly. “I have other plans for you. I 
mean to keep an eye on you.” 

“I don’t understand at all,” he said perplexed, 
“how about the gallant horseman? Where is 
he?” 

“He has galloped out of my life—a mutual dis¬ 
agreement with no regrets on either side. But 
we have plenty of time to discuss that. Aren’t 
you glad? You don’t seem so a bit.” 

“Am I ?” he exclaimed with something of a 
gladsome whoop. “Peggy! ‘True man and woman 
to each other’s arms.’ All the world couldn’t 
keep us apart.” 


THE END. 




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